A Bit of Everything
by KCS
Summary: My usual fandom catch-all for drabbles, ficlets, and oneshots. Gen. Will contain anything from fluff to crack to h/c and heaven only knows what else. This: Sherlock returns, and while most people are angry with him, John is the first and only one to tell him he did the right thing.
1. Chapter 1

**Title**: Not Built in a Day  
><strong>Fandom<strong>: Sherlock (BBC)  
><strong>Characters<strong>: Sherlock, John, Lestrade  
><strong>Rating<strong>: K  
><strong>Word Count:<strong> 400  
><strong>Warnings<strong>: none really, randomness, written by me?  
><strong>Summary<strong>: Changes don't happen overnight, and it's the effort that really counts.  
><strong>AN:** Yes, I finally overcame my leeriness of a new Holmes incarnation after the 2009 movie killed my Holmes!muse, and broke down and watched _Sherlock_ a few days ago. And promptly fell in love. :) Just a warmup into the new fandom for now; more I am sure are forthcoming.

* * *

><p>Lestrade had learnt by now to tune out any sentences containing the words "imbeciles" and "pathetic" and – by far his favorite – "tiny little brains." One must make sacrifices, after all, if one were to avail one's self of the dubious privilege of associating with London's only consulting detectiveamateur specialist/private pain-in-the-neck. If that meant being belittled at every turn, it was only to be expected; and most of them had learnt to give as good as they got, anyway.

But he never forgot the day that changed.

It was only the usual it-must-be-nice-not-being-brilliant-like-me-but-don't-you-ever-get-tired-of-your-own-idiocy, but he watched with interest as Sherlock faltered to a halt mid-stride at a look from his companion.

"Bit not good, then?"

An eyeroll. "Just a bit."

"Ah." Dark eyebrows contracted thoughtfully before a second attempt. "Well, it is not as if you can help it, Lestrade."

The doctor cleared his throat.

"And you have managed so far to not _spectacularly _bungle this case, at least?"

John shook his head.

The detective looked highly affronted. "What, then?"

"Sherlock, we talked about this." Lestrade's eyebrows rose at the coaxing tone.

"Yes, well, I no doubt –"

"If the words _deleted it_ come out of your mouth one more time, you will be taking out your own laundry for a month, I swear. I don't care how utterly boring you think it is."

_Right_, Lestrade thought, _this_ _is getting a bit too awkward for all of us_. "If you two've quite finished with the domestics, then?" he asked dryly.

"Not helping yourself, Inspector," John sighed, as Sherlock threw up his hands in true melodramatic fashion before grasping at his chaotic hair.

"Very well," the detective sniffed, clearing his throat. He continued in a monotonous tone of recitation, a languid hand gesturing dismissively. "Inspector Lestrade, thank you for requesting my involvement in this most mundane of cases which only an idiot could not have solved from the inception. It most likely will be a capital waste of my time, but the offer is appreciated."

Half the Yard watched, fascinated, as John Watson's head impacted the nearby wall with a muted _clunk_. Multiple times.

"Now what?" Sherlock's indignant tone trailed down the corridor behind Lestrade as he left, well ahead of them both so that neither could see he was laughing his head off.

Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither was a good man – but it had to start somewhere.


	2. Chapter 2

**Title**: Blanket Statement  
><strong>Fandom<strong>: Sherlock (BBC)  
><strong>Rating<strong>: G  
><strong>Characters<strong>: John, Sherlock, Lestrade  
><strong>Word Count:<strong> 2165  
><strong>Warnings<strong>: none  
><strong>Summary<strong>: Written for the prompt _Orange shock blankets build up over time. A quick costume is needed for some cheap costume party or Halloween. Sherlock makes the blankets into a makeshift, neon-orange ghost costume for either himself or John._  
><strong>AN**: Written because I needed fluff and a break from my STBB, which is at 33,000 words and counting and still no end in sight (why do I do this to myself urghhhhhhh).

* * *

><p>He would be tempted to diagnose it as an eccentric fixation, except for the fact that supposed sociopaths' fixations usually took a more harmful or reprehensible form than fuzzy orange fleece. But whatever the cause, the flat had slowly become a sort of shock blanket refuge, and Sherlock was the one responsible (John had more manners than to steal community property. Twelve times in one month.).<p>

And he was quite possessive about them, too. John had learned the third week that they were off-limits (even if they were folded in the corner cupboard, that was not for 'general use' apparently) to anyone but Sherlock, and so the stockpile multiplied as the months passed.

Even discounting the one which had become a casualty in Sherlock's latest experiment involving a battery-powered chainsaw and its ability to saw through bone, the blankets were not only knee-deep on the detective's bed, but one was doubling as a tablecloth, two were rolled up to prevent draughts under the doors, one had migrated to Mrs. Hudson's rocking chair (John was still miffed about that, as Sherlock had flatly dismissed _his _request for one on a stormy September night), one held the position of honor as a placemat for The Skull, and they still had a half-dozen or so flapping about the flat in various stages of dishevelment. This included the one John had snatched to mop up the tea-kettle mess from when he'd discovered a (presumably human) pancreas in a saucepan on the stovetop last week.

Given Sherlock's bizarre reluctance to allow anyone to touch his precious blankets, John was therefore understandably surprised to arrive home one evening and find the detective sitting in a sea of neon orange, wielding a large scissors with such little care for eyeballs and other vital organs as to make mothers everywhere cringe.

"I got more tea," he ventured, by way of announcement – which was actually the best method, short of taking out an ad in the papers, to make the man notice he had returned. "And your paint thinner and spray adhesive?"

A dismissive wave. "Forget your precious shopping, John, and try this on."

John barely had time to drop the bags before a heaping pile of fleece was promptly dumped over his head. His muffled protest did not deter his flatmate, who merely began to arrange the folds to his liking. This he might have withstood, given his bounds of tolerance, but when the sound of scissors opening far too close to his face reached him through the folds of fleece he drew the line in the sand and stood firm.

"What on earth are you doing, Sherlock?" he demanded, grasping blindly for the wrist holding the instrument of injury and firmly shoving it away from his upper body.

"Cutting you eye-holes, naturally, unless you would prefer to move about blind for the remainder of the evening," was the response, obviously somewhat mystified as to why he was protesting. "While an interesting experience, I highly doubt it would profit our investigation if you were to stumble about aimlessly instead of participating in events."

"You are not cutting eye-holes in this blanket while it's on my head!" he exclaimed, trying vainly to struggle out of the pile of fabric. "And what is it, besides?"

"A costume, Doctor, a costume!" The elation in the detective's voice fairly set his hair on end. "Fright Nights at Thorpe Park, even you can't have forgotten my telling you that this morning?"

As that had been somewhere between twenty-seven rapid texts simply saying **BORED **with increasingly violent emoticons, and Lestrade's harrying them about London after a murderer trying his hardest to impersonate a vampire and only succeeding in looking like a psychotic Twilight fan, John felt he could be forgiven the lapse.

Sherlock was of a differing opinion and said so, tugging recklessly on the fleece mound. "Do try to keep up, John. Where else to catch a murderer intent on disguising his varied crimes as vampire attacks?"

"Sherlock, wait," he spluttered, struggling to free himself of the blankets, for it was getting hard to breathe. His head finally popped out into blessedly chilly air. He relaxed, orange piling about his shoulders, and looked up at his companion's impatient face. "What on earth does this have to do with your illegally-obtained collection of shock blankets?"

Dark eyebrows twisted to one side. "They are not illegally-obtained, as I was given them," the man said, as if explaining to a very stupid child. "What sort of medical personnel gives a patient treatment for shock and then retracts that treatment?"

"The sort who have to deal with the supposed well-adjusted sociopath who is over in the corner calmly having a quiet panic attack because his blogger got bashed in the head with a brick and couldn't remember his name for twenty minutes?"

Sherlock ignored him completely. "I need you to stand still, John," he said imperiously, whipping the folds back over the doctor's head and ignoring the yelp of protest. "Your costume requires eye-holes, so keep _still_ unless you would like your eyes to go the way of those in our microwave. Really, Doctor, the language you military types use," he tutted, as John told him precisely what he thought of his precautionary instructions.

"What, exactly," John spat through a mouthful of fuzz, not daring to move an inch or even blink as the scissors snicked away, "is this supposed to be?"

One more snip, and he had two passable eye-holes through which to look at the detective's satisfied face. "Why, a ghost, of course," the detective said, as if it should be obvious. "What other costume, for All Hallow's Eve, and on such short notice?"

"Sherlock."

"Mm?" The scissors went flying over one thin shoulder, and John cringed as they embedded themselves into the leather couch.

"Ghosts are _white_, Sherlock," he said through clenched teeth. "Not fluorescent orange. Not orange at all, actually."

He received an absent wave, which told him Sherlock had already dismissed the subject as unimportant, turning instead to destroying the contents of his desk in an effort to find God-knew-what. "Ghosts do not technically exist at all; how would any mortal know what color they are?"

"I know they aren't neon orange!" he exclaimed, with a arm-gesture of exasperation that only made him look like a demented orange bat. Made of fleece. He'd be better off putting a green cap atop the ensemble and going as a slightly misshapen pumpkin.

"I was not going to waste a perfectly good bedsheet simply to satisfy your ridiculous color discrimination, John," was the severe reply, delivered from under the stack of newspapers in the corner. "You have a perfectly functional costume which will allow you to bring an illegal firearm into a public place without notice, and which will permit you to not be recognized, thus ensuring your safety. You will also remain warm, as the temperature promises to drop considerably before our quarry's preferred striking hour of midnight."

"And it will make me _glow in the dark_," he replied dryly. "Not like an orange ghost is going to blend in, in any way. Wait, what are you going as?" he added suspiciously, as the detective scrambled to his feet clutching his flashiest of cuff-links.

A lofty sniff. "Count Dracula, of course. How else to lure a dramatic killer, than to upstage him in every way?" The man disappeared into his bedroom with a majestic swirl of dressing-gown, leaving him staring through lopsided eyeholes at the closed door.

Fantastic. Sherlock would make a bloody _brilliant _vampire, and look incredible doing it.

John, conversely, would get to wander about the park as a small orange ghost, waiting for his idiot flatmate to get himself attacked by a psychotic misanthrope out for blood (literally).

Life was, in a word, unfair.

-00-

Hours later, after a hair-raising chase through moonlit park rides and a truly ghastly horror maze, John sat on a bench near the scene of the apprehension, good-naturedly ignoring the muffled snickers and comments from the police regarding his bizarre choice of costume, which was now rucked up around his shoulders so that he could see properly. The night was frigid, and he was more than happy to snuggle down into the fleece and watch the PCs and Lestrade shiver, breath coalescing in great puffing clouds as they completed the formalities.

Even out of earshot, he could clearly see the moment when Lestrade's patience with Sherlock's condescension neatly snapped and the detective was banished from the scene so that they could book the murderer in relative peace and quiet. Sherlock stormed over to his bench and flopped down upon it with an ice particle-clouded huff, hard enough to bounce the smaller man.

"Can we go yet?" John asked hopefully, visions of hot tea dancing in his head.

He wasn't even granted the courtesy of eye contact, just a sideways sort of exasperated eye-roll. "Apparently not," the detective pronounced with clear disdain. "Something about wanting to question us as to why we didn't apprehend the man when he jumped me in the first horror maze."

John noticed the full-body shiver which accompanied the words, though Sherlock himself appeared entirely unaware of his body's reaction to the cold, as well as the growing swelling over the detective's left eye, courtesy of their killer. Served the daft idiot right, for coming out in nothing more than an admittedly handsome but highly impractical vampire costume, though. Black and crimson silk, even with a collar and thin cape, were not enough insulation against the elements, and had also proven entangling in their scuffles with the criminal.

But Sherlock had made John go as an orange ghost.

He let the man shiver for a full three minutes.

Then he shook his head and held out a fleece-draped arm. "Well, come on then," he sighed, and refrained from grinning outright when Sherlock scooted down the bench with an alacrity that bespoke of desperation. He draped the left half of the blanket around the cape-clad shoulder and then sat back, patiently letting the man tug and yank and wriggle and squeeze until he was satisfied with the fleece's coverage of his thin person.

"Better?" John asked with a fond smile.

"Better."

"That's good then."

"Very good." The doctor winced as the quicksilver smile he received vanished into a bellow that threatened to shatter his eardrums. "Lestrade! How can even the stupidest of your people take this long to complete formalities?"

The DI was already walking toward them, burying his hands in his coat against the chill, a look of extreme longsufferance on his face. "There wouldn't be so many forms to fill out if you hadn't let him biff you in the face with _park property_," he said pointedly. "Maybe, if you'd spent a bit less time playing dress-up and more time preparing to trap a killer, you wouldn't've been tripped up with a cape around your ankles, like a bleeding idiot."

"My 'dress-up', as you call it, was the single element which enabled me to lure him into the open, Lestrade. And furthermore –"

"Girls, please," John interjected wearily before the two forces collided with the typical explosions.

"And tell me again why you decided to come dressed as a pumpkin, John?" Lestrade inquired curiously.

"Sherlock was supposed to be Cinderella and couldn't find his tiara," he dead-panned, and received not the first of clueless looks from his companion. He mentally added fairy tales to the list of things residing in Sherlock's Mental Recycle Bin.

"Ah…right." Lestrade cleared his throat awkwardly. "Well, then, I suppose we're nearly done with the both of you, provided you don't intend to press charges against the park itself?"

"Legalities are _boring_, Lestrade," was the lofty reply.

"Besides, you need to have that eye looked at," John added, squinting up at the detective's battered face.

A sudden flash blinded them, and they both stiffened, staring into the mouth of a police camera.

"Well, I did say _nearly _done," Lestrade amended, grinning at their indignant expressions.

"Civilian harassment," Sherlock threatened, glaring daggers at the unrepentant photographer.

John exchanged a silent conversation with the young man, who had worked with him on a case in the police morgue a week before, before chiming in with, "Yes, can't you see we're in shock?"

One thin hand dramatically waggled one end of the shared orange fleece. "Note the _blanket_, Lestrade."

The official's eyeroll was permission enough for them to take their leave, which they did, ignoring the grinning photographer as he snapped another picture of them leaving the scene, moving somewhat jerkily in a lopsided lump of orange fleece.

Sherlock pitched a minor tantrum when the photos showed up three days later on John's blog and were widely received by his followers, but John ignored the snide comments and patiently endured the scathing review of his write-up of the case.

Sherlock Holmes was a genius, but even geniuses got too busy to erase their internet download history.


	3. Chapter 3

**Title**: Where Angels Fear to Tread  
><strong>Characters<strong>: Sherlock, John  
><strong>Rating<strong>: K (very)  
><strong>Word Count<strong>: 540  
><strong>Warnings<strong>: fluff. Shameless fluff. And Mycroft's umbrella (though not the man himself). Because I have this thing for _umbrella-sharing fluff_. SO THERE. :P  
><strong>Summary<strong>: Sometimes the difference in success isn't in the method, but just in general all-round adorableness...  
><strong>AN:** Because I was up since 4 this morning with food poisoning (violent food poisoning, no I am never eating at the mall Food Court again. Ever. Never ever ever omgughhhhhh.) and the day only got worse from there - fluff. Because I CAN. :P Read it an' weep, fools.

* * *

><p>One thing he had learned in the first month of living with Sherlock Holmes is that while the man owned a coat which would cost an average man six months' pay (why, again, did the fellow need a flatmate?), he owned not a single, solitary umbrella. Despite living in one of the wettest nations on the face of the planet. John would have thought it a completely logical accoutrement, but apparently genius didn't just require an audience – it required a <em>sopping squelching wet<em> one.

As he had far more important things to purchase on his limited funds (necessary things like milk and eggs and disinfectant and earplugs and whatever Sherlock had blown up this week in the flat), an umbrella simply did not rank any higher on his prioritization list than on his flatmate's.

It was with some surprise, then, that Sherlock paused mid-stride to stare at him when they were preparing to leave the flat one evening, one in which the looming clouds that had been teetering overhead all day finally dumped their murky deluge on the unsuspecting city.

"What?" he asked, shuffling into his coat.

"John, where did you get that?" the detective inquired, as he poked curiously at the modest black umbrella leaning against the wall beside the coat-rack.

John's head reappeared from the depths of his coat, and he blinked. "Oh, that – from Mycroft."

Sherlock's lips curled in disgust. "You actually asked my elder brother for an umbrella."

A snort. "Certainly not," the doctor declared indignantly.

"Well, then."

John hefted the object in question, twirling it with dramatic flair in one hand while he opened the door with the other. "I _nicked _it out of his vestibule last time he hauled me in to ask if you've been eating enough vegetables."

Gutterspouts spattered muddy liquid in a steady waterfall overhead, but they remained beautifully dry. John grinned without an ounce of shame. Looking down in startled admiration at the smaller man, Sherlock felt his own lips twitch in a matching smirk.

"Well, he did offer me a ridiculous amount for reporting to him about you and I refused; I think he can be stiffed an umbrella without any harm done, don't you?"

"I am far more intrigued and impressed by the fact that you made it more than ten meters from the house with it," Sherlock replied, eyebrows hidden under his bangs as they set off. "You either have a promising career as an amateur pickpocket, or else it is a slightly disturbing token of his affection that he permitted you to leave the premises with it. Oh, here, give it to me if you simply _must_ share, you keep bashing me in the eye with it."

John blinked but relinquished the handle to the taller man and gladly stowed his cold hands in his dry pockets. "…Why, disturbing, exactly?" he inquired, lips pursed, as he glanced up at the scowling detective.

"Because the last person who stole something from him ended up drugged and unconscious on a freighter bound for South America," was the disgruntled reply.

John pondered this for a moment, and then smirked into the downpour.

"You sent him a postcard from Argentina, I hope. Oy, you great bloody Goliath, give it back!"


	4. Chapter 4

**Title**: Obvious  
><strong>Characters<strong>: Lestrade, Sherlock, John  
><strong>Warnings<strong>: none  
><strong>Rating<strong>: K  
><strong>Word Count:<strong> 200 (including prompt word)  
><strong>Summary<strong>: Written for my **drabble123** table, prompt 03 - _Obvious_. 

* * *

><p>05 – Obvious<br>Sherlock Holmes wasn't the first person to call Lestrade an idiot, though he was the first to explain that only meant in comparison to the Magnificence-Which-Is-Sherlock's-Brain. But Lestrade hadn't made Detective Inspector based upon favoritism; he'd like to think he was at least good officer and a competent investigator.

At the very least, he wasn't blind.

It was the little details that gave it away.

Details like the fact that Sherlock sent John for coffee instead of asking him to examine the body at a particularly gory crime scene. Like the fact that Sherlock took to carrying somewhat squashed protein bars in his pockets though Lestrade had never seen anyone but John consume them during investigations. Like the fact that the idiot made sure to walk into oncoming traffic at least two paces ahead of John in case someone was going to get squashed by a lorry. Like the fact that Lestrade watched him one day step ahead of them to open the door for John, then obliviously let it slam in Donovan's face.

Her squawk of outrage was just as hilarious as Sherlock's face when Lestrade mentioned the behavioral change and asked if he were still clean.


	5. Chapter 5

**Title**: Undercurrents  
><strong>Characters<strong>: John, Sebastian (Wilkes, from TBB)  
><strong>Word Count<strong>: 200 (including title word)  
><strong>Rating<strong>: K  
><strong>Warnings<strong>: spoilers for Blind Banker. Missing scene from the end, between Sherlock's jade pin location and Sebastian's handing over the check  
><strong>Summary<strong>: Prompt 08 on my drabble123 table. My explanation and resolution for the slightly weird friend/colleague introduction correction at the beginning of this episode. 

* * *

><p>John's opinion of Sebastian Wilkes had gone from interested to annoyed straight to Do-Not-Like-Because-They-Are-Rude-to-Sherlock. Now he knew better, he regretted correcting Sherlock's introduction.<p>

To be fair, he'd had a rubbish day, between the chip-and-pin machine and Sherlock borrowing his favorite mug to house a dead rat discovered in the closet. John had not been in the mood to be displayed as the platonic version of a trophy wife. He'd thought nothing of the correction until he heard Sebastian's insults hidden under a thin veneer of amiable recollection, and realized the phrase 'we all hated him' was not hyperbole.

Now, he bared his teeth amicably at the banker.

"Really, though," Sebastian drawled, scribbling an exorbitant amount, "are you…what, his roommate? Keeper?"

"You'll forgive me if I don't see how that's relevant?"

The man's eyes flicked upward. "It's all right, Doctor, I understand," he said tolerantly. "I'd be a bit defensive too if Sherlock dragged me here just because he wanted me to think he has a friend. Jolly good of you."

John smiled thinly. "Sherlock didn't want you to think, Mr. Wilkes."

"No?"

"No." He held out his hand as the banker signed. "He wanted you to _know_. Cheque, please?"


	6. Chapter 6

**Title**: Mediation  
><strong>Characters<strong>: Sherlock, John, Lestrade, Sally Donovan, The Skull (who is named but no spoilers)  
><strong>Rating<strong>: K  
><strong>Word Count: <strong>1752  
><strong>Warnings<strong>: the usual; borderline crack, fluff, etc.  
><strong>Summary<strong>: Written for the LiveJournal **sherlockbbc_fic** kink meme prompt of _Either John and Sherlock or Sherlock and Lestrade have a gigantic row and vow never to speak a word to each other again. Meanwhile, there's a crime scene to investigate. How do they proceed? Sign language? Using a third party as a go-between? Monologuing aloud bitterly? Idek, people. I'm just looking for some crime scene humour. Bonus points if it ends up in a spectacular reconciliation. (Still on the crime scene.)_

**A/N: **For new-to-me readers, the Skull's name I have used from my (alas unfinished) story _Agreement and Disputation_ (the sequel to _Worth and Choice_), in which bookverse!Holmes has an entire human skeleton that he takes apart and then wires back together occasionally (Victorian gothic jigsaws FTW), all the while leaving the skull of the skeleton in various places around 221B. And what's really bizarre is that, going back and reading those two fics of mine, I see more than just that one similarity used in this new BBC incarnation. Great minds and all that, I suppose. So the name of the skull belongs to me, but the majority of this fic as well as the characters belong to the BBC/writers/producers/you-know-the-drill.

* * *

><p>Sally Donovan had seen the Freak show up to dozens of crime scenes in various stages of Utter Weirdness, but those had become mercifully few since the advent of the Most Patient Man in London (the current title by which the small miracle-in-a-jumper was being referred to among the NSY-ers; it varied week by week, with the running favorite being London's Smallest Assassin). This was, in other words, the first time in a long time Sherlock had arrived at a crime scene looking like he'd finally fallen over the fine line between psychopath and sociopath and had landed firmly on his bum in the psychopath territory.<p>

"Is that a _skull _he's carrying?" she heard one of the PCs ask incredulously from somewhere behind the police cordon.

Lestrade turned from conferring with Anderson, saw the Freak and his tagalong approaching, and closed his eyes, mouth moving in perfect synch with a count to ten. Or a prayer to any deity who might happen to be listening, Sally couldn't really tell which at this distance.

"Sherlock, what in the name of sanity –"

"I do not require your idle chit-chat, Lestrade. Where is the body?" A swirl of dark coat and sapphire scarf whisked past them and into the courtyard without waiting for an answer.

Desperate to keep a toehold on sanity, Lestrade turned to the detective's companion. "John, I swear to God if he's on something –"

"No, no, nothing of the kind," the doctor sighed, scrubbing a hand uneasily through his short hair. "He's just…being Sherlock, Inspector."

"John, you do know it's illegal to have human remains in civilian possession without a permit?"

"Inspector, you do know His Royal Unpleasantness will show up in your system as _having _a permit before you can even finish running the checks?"

"Been that bad a morning, has it?" Sally interjected, genuinely sympathetic.

"And night. And previous evening. And previous afternoon." A distinctly un-soldierlike whimper escaped the stalwart ex-soldier. "Is there nothing you can give him to allow me twenty-four hours' peace, Inspector?"

"I gave you a body, what more do you want?"

"Less blathering, more assisting, Lestrade!" was the shout from inside the courtyard wall. "Must I do _everything _for you imbeciles?"

"Don't look at me; God knows _I _didn't invite him, and in rare form too," Anderson drawled, removing his gloves and pointedly edging away from the courtyard door.

The dulcet-toned voice bellowed again. "And ask Doctor Watson if he will kindly grace us with his medical opinion rather than gossiping with your people like a nagging fishwife!"

Lestrade's eyebrows popped upward. "Is there a reason you can't ask him yourself, Sherlock?" he called as they moved toward the courtyard.

"He's not speaking to me, Lestrade," John sighed, edging around a puddle of mud.

"What is he, twelve?" Sally asked, shooting the amateur a disgusted look.

"In certain areas, I wonder," the physician grumbled, moving past an extremely severe and glaring Sherlock to kneel by the body, all without even looking up. "Sherlock, what exactly am I supposed to be looking for?" A few beats of silence, and the man looked up in exasperation. "Cromwell, would you ask _Mr. Holmes_ what exactly I am supposed to be looking for, before I decide to apply the nearest pointed object to hand with considerable force to sensitive portions of _Mr. Holmes's _anatomy?"

"Cromw…oh, you did _not_," Sally exclaimed, shaking her head before planting it in one hand.

"It is a perfectly good and historically significant name," Sherlock stated loftily, hefting the skull in his left hand and looking into its eye-sockets. "Cromwell, you may inform Dr. Watson that he should be searching for signs of poison, most likely a chemical poisoning, but coupled with one or two odd symptoms which do not usually show in such poisonings."

"You have got to be kidding me," Sally heard Lestrade murmur beside her.

"Odd symptoms meaning what, exactly? Oh for heaven's sake…Cromwell, ask Mr. Holmes what odd symptoms, exactly? This is utterly insane." This last in an undertone, accompanied by a despondent _I-am-a-nutter-for-putting-up-with-this _shake of the head.

"Cromwell, you may inform Dr. Watson that he is not required to ask questions or draw his own conclusions, merely to observe and corroborate the hypotheses which I am already aware are correct."

"Cromwell, tell Mr. Holmes if he does not _back off_he is going to become very unpleasantly acquainted with that bog of mud near the trees, and I will not be fetching that infernally melodramatic coat to the cleaner's for him afterwards."

To his credit, Sherlock was wise enough to take a step back from where he was practically standing on top of the doctor. Sally stifled a laugh.

Lestrade had chosen the wise man's approach to dealing with Sherlock Holmes; close your eyes, hum loudly, and pretend that you're talking to a semi-sane individual until something becomes so glaringly obvious that you have to remove yourself from the scene for your own safety, or else have him committed. "Now look, Sherlock, if you already know who did it then just tell us, spare us all the theatrics! This isn't the only case we've got to wrap up before the weekend, you know."

"Oh, please. As if that petty hit-and-run is going to take you more than one hour to finish. Even an idiot could find the driver – and that includes Anderson."

"Oy! I'm not the one walking around a crime scene talking to a bloody human _skull_!"

"Cromwell, be a good chap and tell Anderson to go play in the street, preferably in front of a refrigerated lorry?"

"_Sherlock_," Lestrade growled. "Listen, it's been raining all morning, and my people are tired. Just tell us what you know, and let us all go home, eh?"

"Glyphosate poisoning," John suddenly said, popping back up from the corpse and removing his gloves. "That's my guess. Advanced cyanosis, evidence of loss of bodily function, eventual death by asphyxiation and abdominal hemorrhage. The irritation of the throat is rare, but not if the poison's ingested through the mouth?"

"Glyphosate?" Sally asked blankly.

"Common ingredient in weed-killing sprays," John replied, gesturing to the soggy but well-manicured garden.

"Obviously," Sherlock sniffed. "Any of the household staff had access to the garden shed during the last week, but only one of their footprints along that walkway holds traces of the weed-killer, evidenced in the dying vegetation ground into the print. Find the man whose boots made that print, and you have your killer. Provided he is also over six feet tall, broad-shouldered, right-handed, and more fond of roses than any other flower in this garden."

"How do you figure that one?" John asked curiously. "Because the rose beds have been better weeded than the rest of the flowers?"

"Cromwell, inform Dr. Watson if he wishes to make wild conjectures of his own, that I am under no obligation to confirm them."

"Oh good Lord," Lestrade muttered, as he typed furiously into his phone. "Donovan, get back to the squad and have them pull up the profiles of the gardening staff, get me impressions of their work boots."

"Right." She looked at the two amateurs, who were now bickering loudly over the skull's head…wait, that was redundant, a bit. Whatever. "Do you think –"

"Cromwell, would you inform Mr. Holmes that he needs to cease behaving like the emotionally-stunted infant he is sociologically?"

"Cromwell, please tell the resident doctor that he is jolly well not _my _doctor, and he may take his medical opinions and –"

"Just escape while you still can, Sergeant," Lestrade said, waving her off. She watched as he turned around, hands on hips. "You girls and your bickering, out, now – and take that _thing _with you!"

Two sets of eyes (plus one set of empty sockets) turned indignantly towards them. Sherlock then held up the macabre relic with a look of deep affront. "I do believe we have been insulted, Cromwell." Lestrade snorted, and moved toward the courtyard entry with Sally. Behind them, Sherlock was still at it. "Perhaps if you ask nicely, Cromwell, Dr. Watson will avenge your damaged ego."

"Cromwell, you may tell Mr. Holmes that I will damage more than his ego if he comes anywhere near my face with you again. Keep your mandibles to yourself."

"Unbelievable," Lestrade muttered as they slogged through the mud back to the car.

"They're still at it," she returned, trying not to laugh.

"Cromwell, would you be so kind as to ask Dr. Watson if an offer of a complex-carbohydrate-loaded breakfast at that patisserie we passed would put him in a better mood?"

"Are you planning on footing the bill, Cromwell?"

"Chequeing account is a bit skeletal at the moment, I'm afraid. Will this 'emotionally stunted infant's debit card do in a pinch?"

"Nicely, thank you."

"Excellent. Here, hold him, would you, whilst I make sure Lestrade has the descriptions correct."

"Mm, right, I – half a moment, Sherlock! I am not going to stand here on the street corner holding my predecessor!"

"O-kayyy, really did not need to hear that?" Sally muttered, eyeing the ex-soldier with the wariness she reserved to mentally unstable suspects. To her left, Lestrade was doing his level best to shut Sherlock up and was succeeding miserably, judging from Anderson's smirking over the hood of the police car at them.

"Skulls are so last year, you know," John was informing the relic with apparent seriousness. "You've lost Sherlock completely; apparently I'm more useful and less conspicuous than you ever were."

The skull only grinned toothily back at him.

"I mean, you may listen better, but I'll wager you make a rubbish cup of tea."

Sherlock materialized from out of nowhere in a cloud of black and blue. He appropriated his macabre friend and perched the skull jauntily on one hand, like a sort of ghoulish ventriloquist's dummy, and then turned toward his companion. "Ready?" he asked, threading his free hand through John's sleeve and then more yanking than guiding the shorter man along the pavement. "The owner of the café, Madame Lucas, owes me a favor for clearing her name when Mycroft's people convicted her husband of marketing State documents from a Parliamentary leader's wife…"

"I have never seen a more dysfunctionally functional relationship in my life," Lestrade observed, his tone one of awe.

"Tell me you didn't mean that they're a _threesome_."

"Annnnnd thank you, Sally, for accomplishing what a half-rotted corpse hadn't yet this morning – putting me off my breakfast," Anderson moaned from inside the car.


	7. Chapter 7

**Title**: Endangered Species  
><strong>Characters<strong>: John, Sherlock, Mycroft  
><strong>Word Count<strong>: 1238, Three corresponding art fills  
><strong>Rating<strong>: G  
><strong>Warnings<strong>: lack of artistic ability (and laptop mice are not easy to draw with anyhow), silliness, borderline crack - in other words, my usual  
><strong>Summary<strong>: Written for this prompt on the LiveJouranl **sherlockbbc_fic** kink meme: _When Sherlock was young and very lonely, he wrote on a sheet of paper, 'I want a friend.' And then described all the things he wanted in that friend. Brave, loyal, shorter than him (because Mycroft is too damn big and he doesn't want another Mycroft!) someone who laughs with him and not at him, a doctor because doctors work with dead people, ect, ect, ect._

**IMPORTANT A/N: **This won't make as much sense if you don't view the artwork which happened before the fic portion of the meme fill. You can access it on my LiveJournal (the entry is unlocked) via the _Homepage_ link on my profile, if I can't beat this site's no-link policy here. Take the spaces out of this and change "dot" to an actual dot, hope that works: http : / / kcscribbler dot livejournal .com / 443696 . html #cutid1

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><p>Mycroft Holmes had not been overly fond of John Watson for the first several months of their acquaintance, mainly because the soldier stubbornly refused to be intimidated by an amorphous political position and an umbrella. But gradually that belligerent animosity waned into sociable animosity, which was as close as they would ever get to becoming friends, John supposed. At any rate, he no longer despised Mycroft as much as he once had, only regarded him in the manner one regards a pet vampire bat – approaching with caution, staying clear of the fangs, and trying to not be caught in the same room with it after dark.<p>

But John was also a soldier, and a strategist, and before many months had passed had already identified his tactical advantage with the elder Holmes and was proceeding to lay his plans accordingly.

"You have reconsidered my offer, then?" Mycroft inquired with mild surprise, after the initial pleasantries (or lack thereof) had been exchanged upon this occasion.

"Yes, yes I have," John answered, nodding. "I mean I believe it's only fair, if you insist upon kidnapping me off the streets anyway, to make it worth both our whiles."

A flat smile creased the older man's features. "Excellent," he purred. "I take it that you have a set of stipulations already in mind, then, Doctor Watson?"

"Mm, nothing very extravagant."

"I await your proposal with great interest."

"Do you now. Well, it's nothing too ridiculous. I think it's a reasonable solution to make me an authorized user on one of your minor credit cards," John suggested blandly. "Would be rather nice to not have to bully the cash out of your brother for replacements when he sets fire to the drapes or decides to blow up the microwave. Also, you would think the man is part _cat_, the way milk 'mysteriously' disappears in the flat." His fingers made air-quotes around the word _mysteriously_, and he saw a smile tug at Mycroft's lips. "Just enough to pay for necessities, you understand."

"Reasonable enough. And now what do I stand to gain by such an arrangement, Doctor?"

"Well, I would then be much more likely to cooperate with giving you information about your brother. His health, eating habits, activities, and so on, as well as the odd event that catches your fancy." Arms folded, the ex-soldier leaned casually against the warehouse wall with a smirk. "Also, I give my word to not send your next abduction team to the hospital? Please tell me your personal bodyguards, at least, are more capable than those two were."

Mycroft's lips curled in disgust, hand twitching on the handle of his umbrella. "Masters and Bridgehouse are, deplorably, at the bottom of the competency scale. I assure you, I am wholeheartedly behind your unnecessarily hostile reactions if it will teach the young idiots a lesson." The umbrella lifted in salute. "I accept your terms, then, Doctor; have we a bargain?"

And so it was struck, a sort of pseudo-truce between them. Naturally, John had no idea that Mycroft's credit card wouldn't work in any cash machine other than the one in the Baker Street Tube Station and the closest Tesco's; but then Mycroft had no idea that about ninety-three percent of the information John began passing to him regarding his brother's life was a lorryful of complete _rubbish_. Sherlock found the whole thing quite hilarious, and took great interest in second-handedly feeding his brother the most outrageous stories and colossal fabrications the two of them could come up with, giggling into their dinners, over the news every night.

After one such colossally wild anecdote had been duly fed into the information-gorge which was Mycroft's brain, the elder Holmes did finally realize he had been played by John Watson better than his brother played that infernal violin, and that Sherlock had most likely put the other man up to the whole affair from the beginning. Upon hauling John off the streets for the second time in one week and seeing from the man's unrepentant grin that his suspicions were correct, Mycroft bristled under the idea that his little twit of a brother had nothing better to do with his time than hideously corrupt the one person he had not yet managed to run off _screaming_.

It was with a beatific smile that he retaliated via the next morning's post, in which he mailed a naked baby picture of Sherlock to Mrs. Hudson.

When he next tried to pull John in for questioning, the man refused to get into the car both in word and rude gesture toward the driver. Two tranquilizer darts and a good deal of swearing later, the groggy physician was dumped back on his own doorstep with a commiseratory sack of groceries for his pains.

Next morning, Sherlock sent Mycroft an obese voodoo doll and a slightly squashed package of laxative-laced chocolates through his mail slot. He responded promptly by emailing the whole of Scotland Yard Sherlock's first school essay, in which the six-year-old quite seriously detailed his reasoning for wanting to be a police coroner when he grew up.

Sherlock sent him four hundred and thirty-five picture texts of various dessert items in rapid succession during a Cabinet meeting; his phone was on vibrate, and not silent.

The following day, he tried to pull John in for an attempt at peace negotiations (the ex-soldier had no idea what kind of war he was stepping into or the consequences of refusing to remain neutral between opposing sides.)

John shot out the tyres on the car before escaping over a set of low railings.

Sherlock's punishment of having to write the sentence _I will not use the cat for experiments involving sharp objects or chemicals_five hundred times was the next piece of classic Holmesian literature to make its way into the flat at 221B.

Late that night Sherlock blew up the CCTV camera in front of the corner newsstand.

And the war might have continued indefinitely, had Mycroft's next choice of blackmail potential not been opened by John instead of Sherlock. The doctor had decided at this juncture that discretion was the better part of valour, and was warily staying out of the increasingly intense sibling crossfire. But on this occasion Sherlock was lying upside down on the couch, shoulders on the cushion and legs over the back of it, mumbling and gesticulating to himself about God only knew what, and the opening of the post was left to John.

He did take the precaution of donning latex gloves before slitting open the envelope addressed in Mycroft's distinctly crablike scrawl; an unnecessary gesture, as the only item to emerge from the envelope was a paper containing a child's scribble.

[see artwork at link above]

John held the paper for a few moments, his heart going out to the lonely little boy who had penned the words years before (and also marveling at the weirdness which was an older brother with an apparently all-inclusive scrapbooking habit). Sherlock's upside-down eyes slitted at him curiously as he slid the paper back into the envelope and stuffed it into his coat pocket.

"Anything interesting?" Half hopeful, half _I-am-being-polite-and-inquiring-regarding-your-boring-little-moments-do-you-see-I-am-being-polite-John?_

John smiled, reaching for his phone. "Not to you, Sherlock."

"Pity." With a dramatic sigh which puffed idly at his hair, the younger Holmes closed his eyes again and was lost in his brain-world once more.

John finished adding _Buy Post-its _to his Notepad application and hit Save.


	8. Chapter 8

**Title**: Not a Completely Unproductive Night, Then  
><strong>Characters<strong>: Sherlock, John  
><strong>Rating<strong>: K  
><strong>Word Count<strong>: 1537  
><strong>WarningsSpoilers:** Spoilers for _The Great Game_  
><strong>Summary<strong>: Immediately post-TGG, a conversation held on the steps of 221B. There is fluff. And giggling. And beans. (not in that order)  
><strong>AN**: Was originally going to be a prompt fill for my drabble table, the word _Expectation_, but ended way too long to be cut back for a drabble. We've all, I think, our own opinions about what's going to happen after TGG credits roll, so I might as well jump on the bandwagon with what I think is the most likely (if anticlimactic) scenario - with fluff on top, as per me. Be warned that there is speculation and good-natured disbelief of what seems to be the most common fandom conjecture. Written because I am still fighting off a head/chest cold and I WANT FLUFF OKAY SO SHOOT ME. Be forewarned. :P

* * *

><p>The night had not been, in John's opinion, an overwhelming success. He'd received a tranquilizing dart to the neck which had put him out for three hours, been forced to listen to 'gay!Jim from IT' show his manic obsession with Sherlock for three more hours, been strapped into a bomb vest, been forced to make Sherlock think for just a moment that <em>John <em>was actually Moriarty (such a look of utter devastation and betrayal he never, ever wanted to see again), and generally been scared half to death in a way he'd never been when facing a barbaric but predictable enemy in Afghanistan. And did he mention he hated the smell of chlorine?

And then, to top it all off, the incident at the pool had blown up (literally) rather anticlimactically.

First off, there hadn't been dozens of snipers, but just one with an ingenious little device which simulated multiple laser sights. He'd suspected as much when the laser sights had always seemed to come from the same angle, and had not been at all steady on their targets. Any real sniper would have a much steadier hand than that and would be equipped with a gun tripod – he should know. And that single sniper had been picked off by Mycroft's men before Sherlock had even raised the gun to point at the bomb vest.

Second, Sherlock's aim wasn't really sharpshooter-quality even at the best of times, and when the target was a dime-sized detonator (a bullet impact is not enough to set off plastic explosives, they all knew that) and Sherlock not entirely at the top of his game, John knew there was most likely no possibility the detective would actually make the shot successfully. But on the off chance Sherlock made it, that led to a whole new set of problems.

Namely, that they really had no good place to go to survive. The first inclination was obviously to dive for the pool, but that was patently impossible unless one of them could bend the laws of physics. He would have to tackle Sherlock into it in the split second between the time the trigger was pulled and the time of impact, which had two major problems: one, he couldn't move faster than a bullet, and two, if he did manage that, he would throw Sherlock's aim off and the vest wouldn't detonate after all. Obviously, impossible. In addition, even if they were able to stay in the deepest portion of the pool without drowning for long enough to cushion the impact of falling debris, the heat from the blast and resulting fire would come close to boiling the water in the pool. Steam and scald burns were more painful and took far longer to heal than fire burns, and frankly he would rather risk falling debris than boiling himself alive or drowning on scalding hot water. The only logical alternative, and the most sensible one, would be to dive into the nearest of the changing rooms, most of which were against the inner walls and therefore the most stable places in the building, and cover his head, leaving Sherlock to fend for himself as he pulled the trigger.

_All _of them unacceptable scenarios, provided the bomb actually did detonate.

But to top off an already beastly night, when Sherlock did pull the trigger, the bomb vest had exploded – into nothing more destructive than a nasty combination of capsaicin and tear gas. In the ensuing burning-eyed confusion, Moriarty had not only escaped but also freed his sniper (who'd been pre-equipped with a gas mask) from Mycroft's minions, before both of them had vanished into the night, leaving behind a perfectly intact building and a half-dozen watery-eyed government officials in addition to one thoroughly livid consulting detective.

It was going on three in the morning by the time the paperwork was done and they staggered back into the flat, eyes still burning, with nothing to show for the night but abject failure and, in John's case, a drug-and-stress-induced headache.

Sherlock's large boot kicked the door closed behind them in a fit of pique before his coat (carefully placed out of the danger zone before he'd entered the pool) made a flying dive for the coat-stand and missed, flopping onto the floor unheeded. The scarf sailed after it, meeting much the same fate, but the energy expended in hurling the both of them calmed his nerve for the moment. He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, and then turned, to see that John hadn't even started up the stairs but had opted to collapse on them, leaning wearily against the wall with his eyes closed.

As he would have had to literally step over his flatmate-turned-bomb-victim to move up the narrow staircase, there was nothing for it but to join him; and besides, the windows hadn't been replaced yet and the room above was bound to be colder than the heated entry.

"Budge up a bit," he muttered, giving the smaller man a nudge. A non-committal grunt, and he was bequeathed a scant two inches more of space. "Oh yes, that is ever so much better, thank you."

"Lowest form of wit, Sherlock," John muttered, but scooted over after lifting his head wearily.

He wedged himself into the space on the narrow stair, and absently wondered if Mrs. Hudson would be murderous if he were to awaken her at this hour to ask for something hot to drink.

A muted thud drew his attention back to his companion, whose head had again landed against the papered wall. "Adrenaline," was the murmured answer in response to his elbow. "'S amazing stuff, really…while it lasts."

And a hefty amount of adrenaline it had to have been, too; John had been in Moriarty's company…possession, more like…for over six hours between the time he left the flat and midnight. Sherlock shivered, goosebumps flicking into existence up and down his thin arms. To think that while he'd been doing nothing more not boring than watching crap telly and occasionally keeping an eye on his website in preparation to confront his most brilliant enemy, said enemy had picked his flatmate off the streets as if he were nothing more than just a common, ordinary _person_…

One bloodshot eye cracked open, glancing sideways at him. "All right?"

"Perfectly, perfectly." He shifted his shoulders, feeling the fabric of his now-dingy shirt stretch against them, and cleared his throat – still hoarse from the tear gas, obviously.

"You're lying."

"I am not."

"You are. You have tells, Sherlock." John opened his eyes, looked over at him with a tired smile. "Even to us idiots."

"Do I?" he asked curiously. If so, he needed to learn what they were, so that he could promptly delete them from his behavior. No sense in unconsciously betraying himself to the world, even if most idiots were not brilliant idiots like John and probably would not notice or even care enough to try.

"Mmhm." The murmur was quieter, more drowsy now. If he didn't get them both on their feet again John would fall asleep here on the stairs and be a bear in the morning due to a cricked neck and numb, other portions of his anatomy.

Besides, there was something he was forgetting…

Frowning as his brain tried to recall what he had temporarily sent to his mental Recycle Bin in favor of focusing on the business at hand tonight, he elbowed his…friend, was the safest way to refer to him, for he was not in a frame of mind to think about the things Moriarty had called him tonight. "You can't sleep here, John."

"Want to bet." The words sounded more like _wannoobeh_, so slurred with exhaustion were they, and he felt an unbidden smile flicker across his face.

Then his hard drive rebooted to its pre-pool-scene condition, and he shot upward, clattering down the few steps to the hall floor. John jerked awake with a start, swearing under his breath something about hyperactivity and mood swings.

"Sherlock, what are you on about?" he heard from behind him, in the aggrieved tone of those-who-were-moments-from-crashing-and-happy-about-it.

Pouncing on his coat, he began rummaging in the depths of the many pockets it contained, lips pursed in concentration. "Ah-ha!" He bounded back to the stairs, and dropped the object in John's lap with a _thonk_.

"What…" Bleary eyes blinked owlishly downward, trying to focus.

"You see I am capable of remembering," he sniffed, sitting back with arms folded loftily.

John blinked and held up a single can of beans.

"Forgot the milk though," Sherlock added as an afterthought.

The can rolled down the stairs with a clatter, as John dropped it and started to giggle, head in his hands and whole body quivering with laughter. Sherlock briefly considered taking the opportunity to take notes over the effects of post-traumatic hysteria, but declined in favor of joining him; after all, how was he to scientifically study the phenomenon without participating.

Next morning, when Lestrade came by to get statements about events at the pool, he took one look at the can of beans proudly occupying the place of honor on the mantel beside The Skull, and decided he really did not want to know.


	9. Chapter 9

**Title**: Experimentation  
><strong>Characters<strong>: Sherlock, John  
><strong>Rating<strong>: G  
><strong>Word Count<strong>: 469  
><strong>Summary<strong>: Written as a minifill for this prompt: _Mycroft says something hurtful about Sherlock, and John just lets him have it. Sherlock is deeply moved because no one ever sides with him when it comes to him and Mycroft._ Typed right into the comment box, so not really edited much beyond on-the-fly spellcheck.

* * *

><p>"You just punched the British Government."<p>

"Ah...yes, so I did. Problem?"

He blinked; perhaps John did not realize the gravity of his situation (or the untold horrors that could be inflicted in retaliation by his thoroughly detestable elder sibling). "John. You just punched. the most dangerous man. in the _country_."

John hummed non-commitally as he flexed his left hand. "Welllll," he drew out the syllable, studiously not looking at the men in black heading their direction. "yes, but...he wasn't a very nice man."

Something akin to a giggle welled up inside him, squiggling past his lips before he could think about it. "No," he agreed, sending a smile over his shoulder at his sibling's aghast bodyguards, who were congregating like so many worker bees around their stunned queen. "Don't you think you were a bit...drastic, though?"

John's eyes flickered over to him. "Did it make you feel any better?"

He nodded. "Much, actually," he answered, somewhat surprised himself at the truthfulness of the statement. Someone actually siding with him instead of his 'smarter' elder brother - when in fact he was wrong and Mycroft correct - was certainly a novel experience. It created a strangely warm sensation deep inside him, like he'd drunk Irish coffee or made the scientific discovery of the year. Or found out where Mrs. Hudson had hidden his skull.

"Then it wasn't drastic, it was necessary," John returned, shrugging, and gave him a little shy sort of smile.

Some measure of reciprocation was no doubt considered standard in these matters, he knew; but which gesture that might be, he had no idea as the notion had never occurred to him before to voluntarily indicate gratitude and affection.

Experimentation, then. Picking a gesture at random from his skeletal knowledge, he patted the shorter man on the head, smiling uncertainly.

"Er..." John appeared to either be developing a chest cold, or was trying desperately not to laugh at him. "Sherlock..."

Wrong gesture, then.

"I am attempting to show my appreciation, John," he lectured the man with appropriate severity, scowling as he studied his companion intensely. "Shall I kiss you instead?" he hazarded, picking another item at random from his mental file.

"God, no!"

"Well then." He huffed slightly, hunching into his coat, and scowled down at the polished floor of the hotel corridor.

Laughter, light and affectionate, tinged John's voice. An arm slipped through his, and John hit the button to summon the lift. "Come on, you great idiot," his friend said, grinning at him. "And on the way down fifteen floors let's see if you can manage to not delete the art of giving proper _hugs._"

"Is that the required gesture between friends for expression of gratitude?" he inquired, as the doors opened.

"Not necessarily, but it's nice."

After sufficient experimentation, he was forced to agree.


	10. Chapter 10

**Title**: Turn Left  
><strong>Characters<strong>: various  
><strong>Rating<strong>: G  
><strong>Word Count: <strong>1000 (five 200-word droubbles)  
><strong>WarningsSpoilers: **Spoilers in part 5 for a picture of Season 2 filming, though to anyone with an ounce of imagination and knowledge of ACD canon (of which I have both, and had already considered this scenario long before that picture was posted), it's not a huge leap of logic. Speculation regarding the Reichenbach episodes. BUT BE WARNED, IF YOU WANT NO S2 SPOILERS THEN SKIP PART 5.  
><strong>Summary<strong>: Written for the **sherlockbbc_fic** meme prompt: _Any character in the show is able to go back in time to one precise moment in the past. They can change this moment however they wish. To take back cruel words. To turn left instead of right. To study for that one exam. To snog senseless that boy from the corner shop. Anything, from the mundane to the exceptional. How does this one disturbance in time change the present? I'll take anything: be as cracky/angsty/sexy/drama-y/adventure-y as you want!_  
><strong>AN:**Yes, title is from the episode that began my favorite Who story arc.

* * *

><p><strong>1. Mike Stamford<strong>

Mike thinks Sherlock would get along bloody well with John Watson, and says so as he's trying to convince a skeptical John that the man isn't as mad as he sounds. Well, Sherlock _is _as mad as he sounds, but it's a good sort of mad and not a should-I-be-worried-he's-going-to-kill-me-and-use-the-body-for-science sort of mad. John is unconvinced that a borderline psycho would make a good flatmate, but at any rate Mike would like to see the two give it a go, at least.

They find Sherlock in the lab, doing what he does best; being dramatic and imposing and totally ignoring poor little Molly. John is a bit disinterested, more like he's humoring him, but Mike gives him a nudge as if to say _well go on then_, and John sighs.

"Mike, can I borrow your phone? Mine's got no signal, and I need to send a text," Sherlock states without looking up.

He sighs, retrieves the phone from his pocket. "Sure, here."

Sherlock glances up, eyes flickering over them, deducing, concluding, and turns back to his work. "Not interested," he drawls, fingers tapping away, and Mike knows it's hopeless.

Good luck finding a better potential flatmate, though, he thinks unhappily.

-00-

**2. Mrs. Hudson**

She didn't regret marrying her husband, despite how that turned out; because without him there would have been no meeting Sherlock Holmes, and such a unique and bizarre and frightening and altogether wonderful young man he was. She'd never had children of her own (which was a bit good, probably, given the psychopath her husband had turned out to be), and while he was a bit of an ugly duckling the dear boy was the closest thing she had. So no, she didn't regret marrying her Alfred years ago.

But now, looking at the havoc Sherlock has blithely wreaked in her hall closet, broom closet, lounge, and pantry (God knows how he got in, but he did, and John is not meeting her eyes which means he knew about it and didn't put Sherlock on the Respect for Private Property leash), in his search for that horrid skull which she had hidden last week, she does wish just a bit that she had hidden it somewhere _easier _to find.

And if those boys think she doesn't notice that two pieces of her cherry pie are mysteriously gone, then they are both more foolish than she would give them credit for.

-00-

**3. John Watson **

John Watson is a soldier, and a doctor, and altogether a sensible man. He knows better than to waste unproductive time with might-have-beens, and instead focuses his attention upon life. If he could redo a portion of his life, then most would think he would change being invalided out of Afghanistan.

He dreams of it, sometimes; dreams that he ducks just a bit lower over the broken body he's trying to salvage, dreams that he is able to outrun a bullet like an American superhero, that he serves his term and returns to England to live a normal life. But he does not wish for that in daylight, because if not for his bad shoulder, he would never have met a man who showed him a completely different battlefield.

No, he wishes to change an entirely different moment, and surprisingly gets his chance one morning, months after tenanting Baker Street. Sherlock has by now destroyed half his clothing, set the flat afire, broken every tea mug in the house, and blown up the microwave.

When Mycroft reiterates, "I would be willing to…monetarily compensate you, in exchange for information about my brother's state of health," John answers with a resounding _yes_.

-00-

**4. Sarah Sawyer**

Sarah's a Doctor Who fan, just like John, and they've spent several pleasant evenings watching Series One and Four reruns (she likes the Ninth Doctor, John likes Donna Noble), discussing the shows' principles and how they'd love to be able to go back and change history for the better of a suffering world. Sarah's always held fast to the principle of the series, that Time is sacred, and you can't change the past without changing the future.

But what she wouldn't give, to be able to change one thing.

Oh, it's nothing major, nothing earth-shattering or empire-crumbling, and nothing so selfish as altering their first date (other than the near-death thing, it was rather the most exciting story she could ever have). It's not even that she'd like to save a patient who died, though there is that – but the principle remains: life is sacred and the cessation of it is also sacred.

No, she would only change one thing if she were permitted it by the laws which govern such things; she would go back six months, and stop herself from ever agreeing to hire or befriend John Watson.

Not because she doesn't love him – but because she does.

-00-

**5. Sebastian Moran**

He knew it, he knew the minute the little demon-in-a-granny-knitted-jumper had snapped a hostage situation back on Moriarty so many months before that the man wasn't to be trusted as far as Moran could throw him. A grudging respect had been born that night, soldier and second-in-command against the same, and that was the only reason Moran hadn't put a bullet in John's brain the night Sherlock and Moriarty finally met head-to-head on the rooftops of London.

But Jim is dead, and Sherlock's whereabouts have been sealed tighter than a drum by someone-who-will-not-be-named in the political hierarchy (Moran thinks he's dead, because who could survive a fall like that and Jim's skull was shattered on impact, but they've released no body for Sherlock Holmes and John Watson has been acting anything but heartbroken), and the world has all gone to hell.

Now, he stares down the barrel of a Browning L9A1 to the steady hand and eyes beyond. It is the look of a man who has killed before, and for less reason than a dying – dead? – friend and commanding officer.

He should have shot John Watson the moment the man stepped out of the changing stall at the pool.


	11. Chapter 11

**Title**: Untitled Small Fill  
><strong>Genre<strong>: H/C, fluff, schmoop, whatev you want to call it  
><strong>Warnings<strong>: None  
><strong>Summary<strong>: Written in a mad hurry for the sherlockbbc_fic kinkmeme prompt of _Can't seem to stop crying all day :'( Not even sure what's wrong. Can I just have a hurty/comforty something? Don't mind which characters 3._

* * *

><p>In his defense, it had been a perfectly rubbish day.<p>

He'd overslept, thanks to a certain consulting detective "borrowing" the battery from his alarm clock and not resetting the alarm when he returned the thing in the middle of the night (John wasn't sure whether to be more frustrated about Sherlock's lack of courtesy, or scared of the fact that the man was so quiet he'd not woken up either time). Sarah had not been pleased, understandably, and had been cool all morning toward him, declining to join him for luncheon even though they'd intended to get together and catch up of late. Four of his first five patients had been small children who had screamed/shrieked/wailed incessantly and at an eardrum-shattering decibel level, and the fifth had been a young man with a 'flu who had sneezed directly into his face before vomiting all over his desk.

And that was before noon.

Upon running down the street to grab some lunch, he discovered he'd brought his wallet with him, but no cash (Sherlock never paid for the bloody cabs), and none of his cards would work; he'd had to leave his unpaid-for meal and slink out of the cafe, face flushed with embarrassment. Hungry and mortified, he'd returned to work to be met with a standing-room-only waiting room and a very irritated staff (though this last bit was hardly his fault). Weary, he went back to work, and tried to smile, despite his growing suspicion that the worst patients were being foisted off upon him in retaliation for his tardiness. The damp and chill of an approaching rainstorm throbbed a barometric warning in his shoulder, and though he fought it his leg began to play up after his fifth difficult patient getting into his personal space and telling him what a rubbish doctor he was (it wasn't his fault they were hypochondriacal or refused to exercise and eat vegetables regularly).

Nine hours later (he'd stayed an extra two because they were so swamped), he discovered that he'd missed seventeen calls from Sherlock, instructing him to pick up a variety of supplies and meet him at a crime scene. As he'd no cash, he'd been forced to arrive empty-handed, and received a snide little lecture (in front of a half-dozen Scotland Yarders) about his spending habits (which were non-existent, except for groceries and things that Sherlock destroyed).

And he'd still not eaten.

Donovan and Anderson had ganged up on Sherlock, and the resulting snipe-fest had been so bitter and caustic that he'd lost his temper with all three of them and had told them off in true military fashion. Sherlock had only looked amused, but the other two had then turned their (until that moment, neutral towards him) attentions upon his unprepared person, and for the next thirty minutes he felt what little bit of him that was left in control dwindling down and down, until he wanted to just shrink into his secondhand jacket and just never come out.

Then, to top it all off, Sherlock whisked off and left him again at a crime scene.

In the pouring rain. When he'd gone all day without eating a thing, and his leg was playing up anyway.

He rather thought he could be forgiven for not even making it halfway down the block before having to collapse on a low-slung garden wall, the weight of a hundred tiny little things threatening to destroy his composure when none of them individually were even worth worrying about.

Some days, everything just. went. Wrong.

He scrubbed a shaking hand across his face to clear it of the drizzling rain, and was startled to see a cab screech to a halt directly in front of him. The window was rolled down before he could decide whether or not to be alarmed (cabbies never looked the same once you found out one was a serial killer), and a balding fellow in a horrendous tweed hat poked his head out.

"Your name Watson, mate?"

He blinked. "Yes," he began warily. "...and why are you asking?"

"Gent up on Dovercourt Street give me five quid extra t'come back 'ere and find you, he did," the cabbie declared, obviously enthralled with his remarkable luck. "Said you'd most likely be sittin' down somewhere along 'ere, resting your leg. Friend of yours?"

While the offer sounded exceedingly wonderful, especially given the amount of rain trickling down the inside of his coat, John was not an idiot. They weren't deeply entrenched in a case at the moment, not yet, so there was little risk that the man was lying.

"Wouldn't 'ave so much trouble wit' the rain if you'd a posh coat like 'is," the cabbie added helpfully. "Right nice, 'e was, even if 'e was a bit odd. I near ran 'im over when 'ere he leaps out in front of me without a word of warning. No care at all for proper street crossings, that one. Sure could leg it, though, I've never seen the like except one bloke once what was late for the Eurostar..."

Right, he was wet and cold and hungry and about ten seconds away from an embarrassingly emotional display of combined frustration and other issues he wasn't in the mood to psychoanalyze. If the 'posh bloke' wasn't Sherlock, he at that point didn't even care...

His phone beeped.

_Get in the cab, idiot.  
>SH<em>

Choking on a wet laugh, he scrambled into the back seat, silently whimpering with relief at the warmth, and hoped Mrs. Hudson would have enough cash to hand to pay the cabbie off when he got back.

"Oh, an' I'm to stop and wait while you get y'self some dinner," the cabbie nattered on, weaving skilfully through traffic.

"Kind of you, but unnecessary," he said through chattering teeth. "I've -"

His phone beeped again.

_Any cafe within two blocks. Drop  
>my name and they'll feed you<br>for free.  
>SH<em>

It was a nice thought - sweet, actually, for Sherlock - but he wasn't going to live off another man's charity.

_Stop being an idiot.  
>Also get me orange chicken<br>if Chinese.  
>SH<em>

He stared down at the phone in consternation.

_Also extra chopsticks.  
>Need for eyeball experiment.<br>SH_

He really, really did not want to know...but it gave him an excuse for Lo Mein, and at this point he was past a sense of pride.

"Can you stop for a tick at the Red Dragon, up on the corner?"

* * *

><p>Thirty minutes later, he was scrambling out of the cab, trying to balance the containers of Chinese from an exuberantly grateful former client and at the same time glance back at Mrs. Hudson's rooms to see if there were lights on.<p>

Rain had soaked his collar before he'd accomplished either, and he shivered.

"Evenin, then," the cabbie said amicably, starting to pull away.

"But I haven't -"

"Taken care of," a voice loomed behind him, and he jumped, sending a handful of fortune cookies flying.

"Warn a fellow next time!"

Sherlock's eyes rolled expressively. "Did you get my text about the chopsticks?"

"Yes."

"Did you get them?"

"Yes."

"Three pairs?"

"Six. Your clients are _very _grateful."

"Excellent. Then inside with you, and while I begin skewering eyeballs you can tell me what happened today to put you in such a deplorably pathetic state. It surely was not solely due to my impromptu alarm-clock dissection?"

John smiled as he was ushered inside, and wondered absently when the phrase skewering eyeballs had ceased to cause him surprise.

Probably around the same time that Sherlock's bizarre methods of showing affection had manifested themselves in free meals and borrowed debit cards and (even later that evening) a martini glass left on his bedside table containing unidentified liquid and an eyeball in lieu of an olive.


	12. Chapter 12

**Title**: Like a Grumpy Bear  
><strong>Characters<strong>: John, Lestrade, Holmes in absentia  
><strong>Word Count<strong>: 442 (double 221-B)  
><strong>Rating<strong>: G  
><strong>Summary<strong>: For the prompt: When Sherlock is sick/in hospital at some point and being intolerably cranky, John hangs up a child's model of the solar system over his head while he's asleep. Also inspired by but not really answering the adorable prompt _Who's a grumpy bear?_ on the meme mentioned below (title taken from that prompt).  
><strong>AN**: Prompt was brought on after being flat on my back unable to move for four days due to the most violent flu bug I've ever had in my life. Was going to prompt it in the **sherlockbbc_fic **meme but decided to write it myself for my own amusement. :P Technically, John is much put-upon and harrassed so there is actually whumpage of a minor sort.

* * *

><p>John Watson was a good sort, in Lestrade's opinion; an honest, patient bloke, and certainly an excellent buffer against the caustic personality of Sherlock Holmes. Even Anderson liked John, and it was just that which kept his forensics expert from strangling Sherlock with his own scarf most days. Lestrade had never really got to know the man though, and as such had no idea what sort of personality lurked behind that amiable and unassuming exterior.<p>

He found out a bit, though, when Sherlock landed himself in hospital due to dashing full tilt out in front of one too many cabbies with slow reflexes. Nothing too serious, but cracked ribs, a concussion, and a neck brace were nothing to sneeze at – and he could tell from John's harassed look when he arrived outside the room that the boredom of being flat on one's back had already set in for London's only private consulting detective.

"All's quiet on the western front, finally. His Grumpiness has finally condescended to take a nap," John muttered in response to his greeting, though his eyes brightened upon seeing the Starbucks cup.

"Coffee?"

"I could _marry _you, Inspector. Didn't bring him a cold case, by any chance?"

"Sorry," he apologised, and tried not to be amused at the doctor's dismay. "Driving you mad, is he?"

"You've no idea."

"And thank heaven for that," he replied, saluting the man with his cup before downing its now-lukewarm contents.

"I'll be getting my own back when he wakes up, though," John mentioned casually, taking a sip and sighing blissfully.

"Oh? How's that, then?"

John grinned and, putting a cautionary finger to his lips, cracked open the door to the consultant's room and gestured at the ceiling.

Stuck to it directly over the bed's pillow was one of those child's educational replicas of the solar system, sparkly pasteboard planets carefully labeled in a firm hand.

Lestrade's sinuses suddenly filled with macchiato.

"If the next body we find is yours, you can't say I didn't warn you," he chuckled when he could speak again.

John smirked as he shut the door and leaned on it, free hand in his pocket.

"Well, I'd best be off; just came by to check on you both."

"Thank you, Inspector." They shook hands warmly. "And I'll have him call you for a statement when he's more lucid."

Behind them, came a suddenly outraged howl fit to wake every patient in a three-floor radius. Something large and metallic struck the wall – a tray? He probably didn't want to know.

"Yes, you do that," Lestrade observed, laughing into his drink.

"Walk you to the lift?"

"I rather think you'd better."


	13. Chapter 13

Sorry for the lack of updates, everyone, but my laptop was attacked by two viruses which wiped my entire stock of hardware. All my files escaped, at least the important ones, due to backups, but I no longer have hardware or software on my laptop. I intended to have updates for several things by now but have not had opportunity to finish them. I will have a few updates next week when I have a vacation week and a new laptop, hopefully, and a holiday oneshot set in the _Messy Business_ verse at least.

Until then, have this minifill I forgot I did for the** sherlockbbc** meme on LiveJournal, for the errant comment of "I find myself mesmerized by the differences in toe length."

* * *

><p>"Do I really want to know why the fridge is filled with jars of human feet?" John slammed the door, leaned against it for a minute, shaking his head. "Oh, wait, I'd forgotten," he added dryly. "I am Sherlock Holmes, and I am a modern-day bodysnatcher! Honestly, Sherlock, what are you trying to do, build a multi-appendaged Frankenstein?"<p>

The detective sniffed. "Please, John. As if that highly melodramatic result would even be _possible_."

"Well, that's good then."

"It'd be murder on the electric bill," Sherlock clarified, grinning down at his microscope slide.

John paused with his left hand on the faucet handle, uncooked pot noodle in his right. "Why do you have five jars of feet in there, anyway?"

"Ex-"

"-periment, yes I can deduce that much for myself, thank you. But _feet_, Sherlock!"

"They are the feet of the last three murder victims, John. I find myself mesmerized by the differences in their toe-length. Now do hush, I am analyzing."

"Toe-length." The pot noodle filled up with water and John shoved the cup into the microwave, keeping hold of the resident dish of eyeballs. "And it has a bearing on the murders...how?"

"Ha!" A shout of triumph, and Sherlock leaped from the table, giving a yank to John's coat as he passed. John found himself in an awkward sort of half-twirl that would have looked amazing if he hadn't been wobbling unsteadily with a jar of viscous fluid-coated eyeballs. "Well are you coming or not?" Sherlock bellowed as he dashed down the stairs.

John looked mournfully at the revolving plate in the microwave, and wondered if half-cooked noodle was as inedible as it sounded.

"JOHN! COME ALONG!"

"If he says _the game is a foot_," he muttered, "I will shove a few of those toes up his -"

"JOHN, THIS CENTURY WOULD BE LOVELY!"

Ah well. He still had Sherlock's debit card, and there was a Pret A Manger not too far from Scotland Yard...


	14. Chapter 14

**Title**: Gifts from the Enemy  
><strong>Characters<strong>: John, Mycroft, Anthea  
><strong>Rating<strong>: K+  
><strong>Warnings<strong>: None that are serious. Mentions of (off-screen) grave-robbing. Borderline crack humor. The usual, iow.  
><strong>Summary<strong>: Mycroft changes the venue of their monthly kidnappings just to keep things interesting. John is unappreciative, and knows how exactly to push the elder Holmes's buttons.  
><strong>AN:** Originally I was going to write this opening scene for Challenge 018 at **watsons_woes** for the Halloween/spooky challenge. I ended up scrapping it after a few paragraphs and Fear Itself was the start-over result, which I don't regret at all. So I decided to turn it into a sort-of holiday fic, though there's not much holiday about it now that I'm finished. My thanks to my friend and beta, _**PGF**_, for helping me over the hump with this one. *hugs*

* * *

><p>"Only a Holmes," he muttered in irritation, climbing out of the car into the crisp twilight. He sank ankle-deep into snow with a soft crunch, and a cloud of crystalline irritation huffed from his mouth into the icy air. Frowning, he debated the wisdom of just getting back in the car and waiting for Mycroft to come to him.<p>

From her seat inside the heated limo, Anthea locked the doors on him.

_I hate my life,_ John thought, shoving his hands in his pockets against the chill. A minute's walk brought him to the be-umbrellaed figure standing eerily still against a backdrop of moon and stone and macabre snow-coated statuary.

He shied instinctively away from a stone cherub, shivering.

"Cold, Doctor Watson?" Mycroft inquired, voice dripping with politeness.

"Ah, no. But I watch Doctor Who," he replied, nodding at the stone angel because he was not about to take a cold hand out of his pocket to point. Mycroft looked far too amused at his discomfort, and so he barreled onward in hopes his embarrassment didn't show (ha, he should be so lucky). "Why, exactly, did you choose a cemetery for our little chat, this time, and on a bloody freezing December night? If I didn't know you were _above_ the level of Sherlock's melodrama, I'd think your sense of humor is even more warped than his."

"I thought it appropriate to…change the venue, so to speak, Doctor." A dangerous smile creased the man's face. "After all, we cannot have you feeling the advantage in these little conversations of ours, now can we."

John refrained from rolling his eyes. "Y'know," he began patiently, "you could just send me a memo, or something. You're no more frightening in person than you are through email on a computer I know you've already hacked and bugged."

A slender eyebrow went up. "I prefer to conduct my business in person, Doctor Watson. Face-to-face conversation is on average so much more honest and open than any written form could be, don't you agree?"

"To someone who can reel off a man's profession, phobias, grandmother's maiden name, and favorite breakfast cereal just by looking at the turn-ups of his jeans, I suppose so," he replied dryly.

"Precisely." The smile widened, and the back of his neck prickled. "So then, Doctor, to business. I trust you will inform me if you become too chilled?"

"I'm informing you that I've become too chilled. May I go, then?" he asked, eyes innocent.

The smile stayed in place, which meant Mycroft was Not Amused. "There have been concerns raised, Doctor, regarding my brother's slightly manic-depressive tendencies of late. Do you know how much paperwork it takes to erase reports of disturbing the peace due to gunfire happening in a central London flat?"

"Less than it takes to cover up illegal possession of a firearm, I would imagine," he answered, arms folded calmly. "And Sherlock isn't necessarily manic-depressive any more than he is sociopathic, and we both know it. What is it with you Holmeses and your self-diagnosing?"

"You cannot possibly think he is entirely stable, either mentally or sociologically, Doctor," Mycroft continued patiently, as if explaining a complicated maths equation to a small child.

John's phone took that inopportune moment to blare _"Message from the dark side, there is!" _in Yoda's characteristic croak, causing Mycroft's imperturbable eyebrows to climb.

John felt his ears burn. "I hate it when he does that," he growled, yanking the offending phone out of his pocket. He supposed he should be grateful that Sherlock had been in a whimsical mood rather than truly bored; last time he'd gotten hold of John's phone he'd changed the default ringer to maniacal laughter and the message alert to the sound of a chainsaw.

_Where are you?  
>Need drain cleaner.<br>Large quantities._

John shot off a quick answer before turning the ringer to vibrate and stuffing the phone back in his pocket.

_Operation Spy on Sherlock.  
>Chosen rendezvous the<br>graveyard off Church St.  
>Dare I ask?<em>

"I take it his experiment regarding the ability of the average kitchen Disposal to destroy bone fragments was not a success."

John closed his eyes and counted to ten before opening them again to face the insanity that was his life. "I don't believe so, no. Now, where were we?"

His pocket vibrated.

_Oh, charming.  
>And I wouldn't ask,<br>no. Why graveyard? _

_How should I know?  
>He's your brother,<br>not mine. Thank God._

"I trust I am not boring you, Doctor?" Mycroft's voice sounded more annoyed than usual.

"No more than usual, sir," he replied cheerfully, smiling up at the taller man. "Do continue."

The phone vibrated again.

_Grave robbers rumored  
>last week. If you find<br>any bone fragments  
>bring back with you.<em>

Charming. Sighing, he tucked the phone back into his pocket, wishing again that he'd a decent pair of gloves (Sherlock had destroyed his last week at a crime scene, in order to demonstrate that yes, the suspect could have incinerated the blood-stained evidence in a lit fireplace within fifteen seconds).

"Doctor, I presume you are aware of Sherlock's aversion to social niceties?" Mycroft said, evidently deciding to continue despite not having John's full attention.

John raised an eyebrow. "Don't tell me you are offended he didn't send you a Christmas card."

"I am neither offended nor surprised by that particular lack of action, Doctor - but I am concerned, deeply concerned, about his deplorable habit of, shall we say, appropriating objects that do not belong to him." The politician's brow was furrowed with what appeared to be genuine frustration, and John resisted the urge to knock his head against the nearest headstone.

Multiple times.

He was tired, a bit, of becoming collateral damage in sibling warfare. "What has he done now?"

"Do you remember the so-called office party last Friday eve at Lord Backwater's establishment?"

"You are aware that I don't, as I was working that evening," he replied dryly. "Not all of us were born into the nobility, Mr. Holmes, or are forced by convention to endure the social events necessitated by them."

Mycroft sighed, a brisk puff of swirling air into the night. "Dear me, Sherlock is a simply ghastly influence upon your...so very _common_ sensibilities, Doctor. At any rate," he continued, when John rolled his eyes, "Sherlock was, shall we say, encouraged to attend the gathering at the request of the -" a thin smile, fake as Sherlock's ginger wig, appeared, "...well, of a certain interested party."

John's head cocked to one side. "Meaning...what, that you blackmailed him into coming to your _office party_? Don't you have more important national affairs to see to of an evening, or is that just a side hobby?"

The smile twisted itself into a scowl. "Your flippancy is entirely unacceptable in this most serious matter, Doctor."

"Yes, well, that doesn't appear to be stopping you, now does it?"

His mobile vibrated again.

_Whatever he is telling  
>you I did, it is gross<br>exaggeration. And I  
>was slightly drunk.<em>

He looked askance at the message, only to jump slightly when the phone vibrated again in his hand.

_Also Lord Albertus  
>had it coming.<em>

He stared at the screen. What on earth _happened_ at that party?

"_Doctor Watson_." The voice was literally scant inches in front of him, and he jumped about half his height in the air in surprise.

"_Must_ you do that?" he asked indignantly, scuttling backward a safe distance.

"If I am unable to keep your attention, Doctor." Mycroft smiled again as he shoved the phone into his pocket, and he was reminded of a demented Cheshire cat. A rather overfed, creepy one.

Sherlock would be ever so proud of his mental imagery software.

"What, precisely, is the point of all this, or am I simply functioning as your relationship counselor at the moment?" he asked, attempting to appear unperturbed.

Mycroft looked less amused than before, if that were possible. "I require your services, Doctor. Ah ah, do not think of refusing," he added, when John opened his mouth on sheer instinct, "unless you would prefer Sherlock's access to medical and forensic equipment be restricted on the grounds of his illegal possession of human remains?"

He gave the man a look of pure loathing. "You really must be desperate, to resort to blackmail that low. And do you have any idea what happens when he has no ability to run experiments? Are you asking to see your office burnt to the ground?"

Unflappable, Mycroft merely asked, "Do I have your cooperation or not, Doctor?"

"With what?" he spat through clenched teeth.

"Sherlock...appropriated certain documents of state while at that social event, Doctor," the politician stated, looking thoroughly peeved. Or constipated. John really didn't care which. "Documents which, while they are quite harmless politically, should not have disappeared at a state gathering. The resulting suspicion of everyone involved is forcing a drastic amount of unnecessary tension into diplomatic events."

John looked up at the taller man, eyebrows raised. "Are you serious?"

"Quite so." Swinging his umbrella in an arc, Mycroft sent a small blob of snow flying into the air, where it landed on John's trouser leg. Lovely. "I need the documents back, Doctor."

"And why, exactly, can you not visit him yourself and just take them?" he inquired coolly, blowing on his freezing hands.

"Dear me, visit that death-trap twice in a month? Such legwork is entirely repulsive. Besides, Doctor," and that psycho-Cheshire smile was back again, "why should I, when I have your assistance so readily at hand?"

John's non-verbal response as he walked back toward the car got him a tolerant sigh from the elder Holmes and a smirk from Anthea, who still refused to unlock the doors for him until he threatened to key the immaculately-polished car with one of Sherlock's lock-picks.

"Bit unnecessary, that," she said mildly as he slid into the back seat.

"You're not the one been standing in the ruddy sub-arctic for the last quarter hour talking to your creeper of an employer," he groused, buckling his seat belt with more vehemence than was really necessary. "Honestly, dragging a bloke all the way out here for nothing more than a child-minding request -"

"Hardly," she replied, glancing out the front window as their driver turned the heat higher but made no move to put the car into gear.

John craned to see over the seat in front of him. "What then? I don't - augh!"

His strangled half-yell earned him a flicker of amusement from the otherwise Lurch-like driver, and he turned in consternation to his traveling companion, who was busily texting away with a click of manicured fingernails.

"The rumors of grave robbers are true, though they seem to have been scared off quite effectively tonight at least by a silenced sniper rifle," she said in a tone of boredom. "Mr. Holmes seemed to think a belated Christmas gift might aid you in convincing his brother to cooperate."

"Mycroft expects me to tote a bloody _skeleton_ up the stairs?" he all but shrieked, as the driver popped the right humerus off, ostensibly to demonstrate the skeleton's fine condition.

"Well I am certainly not about to touch it," she sniffed, tapping the driver on the shoulder. Lurch chucked the arm into John's lap with a ghoulish clatter of phalanges and put the car into gear, and a moment later they were smoothly gliding out of the cemetery.

"Lovely," John moaned, slumping into his seat as they exited the iron gates. "Just lovely. And - ngh. Please tell me this's not _flesh_ still attached at the metacarpals?"

"I am no osteological expert," Anthea said calmly. "And get it out of my face unless you'd prefer to walk with it back to Baker Street."

_I really, **really** hate my life,_ he thought dismally, as he tossed the arm back into the front seat with a shudder and sat back to mentally escape the weirdness which was his world for just a few moments.

* * *

><p>Sherlock was ecstatic.<p>

This was a Good Thing.

Mycroft's venue and bribe of choice for the next kidnapping was the Reptile building at the Zoo.

This was _Not_.


	15. Chapter 15

**Title**: Hospital Protocol  
><strong>Characters<strong>: Sherlock, John  
><strong>Rating<strong>: K  
><strong>Word Count<strong>: 442 (2 221Bs)  
><strong>Warnings<strong>: Fluff  
><strong>Summary<strong>: _"Reliable sources informed me that customary protocol when visiting someone in hospital is to bring a suitably mawkish gift," Sherlock stated._  
><strong>AN**: Was originally going to be part of my entry for Challenge 019 at **watsons_woes **but just didn't fit into what I'm going to do there, so I cut it down to two 221Bs.

* * *

><p>Ironic, being a doctor, how much he detested hospitals. The sickly sterile scent of the patients, the impersonal decor, the rampant boredom which inevitably resulted no matter how much money your insufferable flatmate had forked over so that you could have a private room (it was Sherlock's fault he was sick, the man should bloody know better than to experiment indoors with concentrated chloroform, and he'd jolly well better pay, thank you).<p>

That boredom was broken this time by something so bizarre as to render him completely speechless for a few minutes, and debating-whether-or-not-to-call-for-backup for the next ten.

Because this time, he had scarcely blinked when something soft and suspiciously furry was being rudely shoved into his arms.

"Nngh, what?" he mumbled groggily, staring at the monstrosity occupying his blanket space.

"Reliable sources informed me that customary protocol when visiting someone in hospital is to bring a suitably mawkish gift," Sherlock stated from somewhere over his head, where he was apparently eagerly investigating the inner workings of the nearby machines.

John suspected the "reliable source" was Google Search, but did not say so. He stared at the stuffed bear, which was surprisingly soft, if an alarming shade of baby blue. "Was the gift shop out of chocolates, then?"

A snort. "Out of ones which did not come in a heart-shaped box."

-00-

"...Right." John held the furry blue teddy at eye level, and patted its velour jumper. "You are aware this is a My First Bear for a newborn, yes?"

"Would you have preferred the electric pink one which screeched I Wuv You Beary Much?" Disdain dripped from the detective's tone. "The assortment of items was positively ghastly, John. Be _grateful_."

He laughed. "Yes, well. It was good of you, Sherlock," he said, grinning as his flatmate suddenly seemed very interested in an invisible stain on the floor. "It's quite...cute."

"I do hope you are talking about the animal and not me, John," Sherlock muttered, yanking the single chair closer with one foot and gracefully folding himself into it.

"Not you, no. Heaven forbid."

"Mmph." His friend yanked his mobile from his pocket.

John only grinned and, as he couldn't reach the table, tucked the bear under one arm, falling asleep to the tap-tap-tap of Sherlock's texting.

Really, it was such an unusual gesture that John probably would have forgiven Sherlock snapping a picture of him sleeping with a baby-blue teddy bear - had Sherlock left it there. Being Sherlock, of course he didn't.

John woke next to seven emails from New Scotland Yard's finest asking about a childhood reversion due to living with The Freak, and ninety-three new comments on his blog.


	16. Chapter 16

**Title**: Music  
><strong>Characters<strong>: John  
><strong>Rating<strong>: PG  
><strong>Word Count<strong>: 965  
><strong>WarningsSpoilers:** Major spoilers for _The Reichenbach Fall._  
><strong>Summary<strong>: (Prompt not really spoilery, fill is) Fill for this prompt: There's a homeless man among the hundreds haunting the streets of London. Maybe he's a junkie or a madman or both-but he has a violin, and he plays the most hauntingly beautiful music John Watson has ever heard. 

* * *

><p>John has never really loved music. As a child, he would rather have played rugby, and as a teenager, he was the strange one who loved to read and write, and music was a distraction from both of those. He had never quite understood what Sherlock found so appealing in going to hear an opera, and when Mycroft gave (read: bribed) him one Christmas with the newest iPod Sherlock laughed at him for filling it with audio books and crap telly instead of albums.<p>

When he moved in with Sherlock Holmes, he'd been fully prepared to hate the violin with all the passion he could muster at one o'clock in the morning; but a good set of earplugs and a load of patience did wonders to lessen his homicidal inclinations, and in his defense Sherlock was quite a good violinist and tried to make it up to him by involving John occasionally in his compositions. Still, John had never been overly impressed with anyone's music; he received inspiration through other methods, and frankly he preferred silence, after Afghanistan.

Until Sherlock died. Now, the silence is a yawing chasm, threatening to swallow him without much of a struggle, inexorably forcing him back into the loneliness he dreads more than death itself. And suddenly he finds himself trying to fill a void which will never really be filled, using the radio or playlists to pipe something, _anything_, into the silence that will drown out the sounds of a beloved ghost.

His therapist has a field day with him at first. He tries picking the clarinet back up for a few months, promptly drops it because he sounds like he is back in grammar school, and then attempts the violin for another seven before giving that up as well (the dvds he's using to teach himself tell him to _feel the music_, and he is obviously incapable since he does not feel _anything_). He is now the machine he nearly - thank God, now, that he bit the word off before it fell - accused Sherlock of being on that last night.

It should bother him, that it does _not_ bother him, he vaguely thinks, as he sets Sherlock's violin back in its case for the last time, a white flag of surrender in a war he knows he has no chance of surviving unscarred.

His failure feels like a betrayal, even if it really isn't, and he walks the streets of London that night and many others heedless of his direction, just wondering if he will ever feel anything, ever again. Winter arrives, Christmas comes and goes, and he does not recognize it other than the obligatory celebration with Mrs. Hudson, and the chill seems to have permanently settled within his core, frozen and relentless. New Year's Eve, his ramblings one night take him along the waterfront, and the bustle of night-life and the lights of Westminster do not lift his spirits as he'd hoped (because every dark coat which passes him makes his heart clench, and every corner of every alley holds a memory he is still not ready to confront).

Oddly enough, it is the sweet, haunting sound of a violin which draws his attention and makes him lift his head, to see a homeless man sitting on a bench overlooking the Thames. A battered Tesco's cart contains the fellow's few possessions, save for the one he holds reverently - a relic from a more fortunate time, John thinks, and wishes he were with Sherlock who could reel off the man's entire history at a glance. The violin is tarnished and old, but held in the hands of an obviously gifted musician, and John doesn't have to wonder why this talented man now haunts the streets, using music to drown out something he evidently does not want to hear.

He impulsively tosses a fiver into the tattered cap which sits on the bench seat beside the man (he knows intimately the signs of a junkie and a drunk, and the man displays neither), and moves on, without waiting for the muttered word of thanks which drifts after him into the darkness.

Safely in the shadows, John pauses to listen, and lets the haunting music evoke his thoughts, purging and purifying and _feeling_. And if he weeps a little, for the first time in what feels like a very long time, he thinks he is a bit entitled.

The song (he does not recognize it; a composer, hard of luck, then? He is no consulting detective) trills off into the night, and he leans against a lamp-post, staring out at the water and remembering the dozen-odd times they had chased a criminal across one of the bridges, and the three times one or the other of them had ended up in an impromptu swim due to clumsiness or a criminal's quick thinking.

He almost - almost! - smiles when he recalls the time Sherlock decided jumping off Westminster Bridge was the only way to escape the half-dozen thugs closing in on them, and how he'd followed that insane, wonderful man with only a token hesitation.

John had been willing to follow Sherlock Holmes anywhere, against any odds and against all sanity - so why, _why_ did Sherlock not _let_ him, this time?

Big Ben strikes midnight; New Year. A new year, the first of many which he would spend alone.

Behind him, the violin changes quietly to _Auld Lang Syne_, and the core of ice which has been choking him for months suddenly loosens, melting in an icy flood of memory which is equal parts frightening and cathartic.

And if the exact phrasing and the trill at the end sound vaguely familiar...well, John has never really loved music.

No doubt it is only his imagination.


	17. Chapter 17

**Title**: Penance  
><strong>Characters<strong>: Mycroft, John  
><strong>Rating<strong>: K+  
><strong>Word Coun<strong>t: 2510  
><strong>WarningsSpoilers:** MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE REICHENBACH FALLS. DO NOT READ IF YOU DON'T WANT THEM EVEN IN THE SUMMARY.

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>Warning for angst. Only as much character death as is shown on the show, and only referenced, so it's not a deathfic really.<br>**Summary**:Mycroft Holmes's selling out his brother's life story to a man he knew was certifiably obsessed does not sit well with an ex-soldier not thinking clearly from grief.  
><strong>AN:** This _could _ostensibly be taken as OoC, I suppose, depending upon your perceptions of these characters, but to me it isn't ooc. But be warned regardless. I'm always interested in people's perceptions of canon/fanon, and welcome other opinions - but do me a courtesy and don't just leave me a comment saying "this isn't what would have happened" without explaining your own viewpoint, ok? I've gotten a few of those of late and I find them a bit annoying. Fandom is big enough for all of us and our ideas.

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><p>It has been without question the worst day of his life, and that includes the afternoon in which an oversight of his undersecretary's inadvertently caused a revolution in a South African country and the overthrow of a perfectly functional minor government. Though he did not push his baby brother off the rooftop of St. Bart's Hospital, he is in his informed opinion as much to blame for Sherlock's death, as a shop keeper who <em>knowingly<em> sells alcohol to minors then is responsible for their automobile wreck later that night. Not directly guilty, but guilty all the same, and the mind does not distinguish one sort of guilt from others.

He should have been expecting it, but he has not been thinking entirely clearly for the last six hours, during the cleanup of this mess - and that distraction has now cost him.

It is timed perfectly, the sound of a gun safety being removed coinciding with the click of his flat's door closing. He drops his briefcase, and leaves his arms well away from his body.

"You do understand if you use that weapon, Doctor Watson, that you will not make it out of this building alive?" he asks with a calm that is only half-genuine.

The doctor's voice is hoarse, nearly a snarl, and he doesn't have to see John in the mirror across the hall to recognize the signs of a man gone half-mad with grief. "And you really think I care about that, at this point, Mycroft?" A shifting of weight behind him. "Drop the brolly, please."

Unnecessary. Speculation was rife among his employees and minions about his simple but ubiquitous umbrella being all manner of a secret weapon or tool (and Sherlock, God rest his annoying little soul, had once insolently intimated he believed it to be a covert chocolate dispenser). He dropped the umbrella, again keeping his hands away from his body; one does not argue with an angry soldier, and especially this one.

This unfolding drama is such a pity, for he holds no ill-will toward the grieving man, and he does deserve to suffer for the part he played in tonight's debacle. But John has only thirty seconds before his bodyguards come to do their first check of the night after the sensors indicated his arrival home, and he has no wish to see the man imprisoned for life in a secure government facility.

"If you're wondering about your two minions downstairs, I took care of them before coming up here," John snaps behind him, and his eyebrows lift an inch; better even than he had thought. It only now occurs to him that this man's military file was not exaggerating, and everything he has deduced about him is equally true. John Watson has been flagged as a dangerous man in his surveillance system, and not solely because he shot a man with an illegal firearm within forty-eight hours of meeting Sherlock. He makes a mental note to offer the doctor a job with MI-6 if he survives this encounter, and returns his full attention to the drama unfolding behind him.

"Do you really intend to execute me for selling out my brother?" he asks bluntly, for he knows that regardless of his intentions that is in essence what happened, and definitely what it looks like to anyone who...cared, for Sherlock.

Behind him, the doctor's breathing is growing increasingly rapid, and in the angle of the mirror he can glimpse John's face as the man tries to keep his emotions in check. But a combination of two sleepless nights, stress, hunger, and grief are warring against John's inner (slightly flexible) sense of morality, and Mycroft knows he is treading on extremely thin ice.

"Give me one good reason," John grinds out, jaw twitching though Mycroft sees the man's hands are perfectly steady. "One. Good. Reason. Why I shouldn't shoot you for what you did."

He does not answer, because he knows the signs of a man who has not yet let himself break down - knows them, because they mirror his own.

"You," and John takes a deep breath, choking on what sounds suspiciously like a sob, "_you sold him_ _out_ - to the man you knew _all along_ was going to do this!"

"You should know, John, the duty to Queen and country supersedes all others," he says quietly, though they both know that is a flimsy defense at best.

"You could have just gotten rid of Moriarty while you had him, and your secrets would have been safe without dragging Sherlock into it!" John practically shouts, and then apparently remembers he is trying to go unnoticed in a building crawling with government security measures. He modulates his tone for the next statement. "The man strapped me into a bomb vest, Mycroft, killed dozens of innocent people last year during the Bruce-Partington case alone, and he's certifiably obsessed with your brother. You knew he would go straight for Sherlock when released - and _you let him go_?"

"I had to, John." His voice does not waver, for it is the truth. "He refused to give us the entire key unless he was released in addition to getting Sherlock's information. I take my orders from the highest authorities, which even I cannot subvert. I had no choice."

"There is _always_ a choice," John hisses, fury infusing the words with enough venom that for the first time, he wonders if the doctor might just go through with this.

"Not in this case," he replies quietly. "John, if you knew how sorry I am -"

"Sorry. You're - you're sorry. Oh, that's just bloody brilliant, that is. Well excuse me for pointing out, Mycroft, that being _sorry_ isn't going to change the fact that your brother died this morning and the papers are full of the story you gave them - directly or indirectly, I don't care which."

"The tabloids and all other accounts will be taken care of tomorrow, John, and the truth will be published; that is one thing I can promise you."

"And you think that will fix everything, do you?" Another choked breath behind him makes him drop his head, looking at the immaculate flooring. He has done this, despite the fact he had not had many options and none of those existing ones had been good. "It won't change the fact that jumped off a building, Mycroft!" This one is an actual sob, Mycroft hears, and cringes. "Just...just tell me one thing," John gasps from behind him, and in the mirror he sees the gun shakes slightly.

"If I can," he replies gently.

One hand drops from the gun to brush against the doctor's eyes. "Why?" he chokes out, the single word ringing with the age-long cry of grieving humanity. "He didn't have to jump! We could have...done something, I don't know, gone into hiding until the truth came out - but he didn't have to - to -"

"Say it, John," he says quietly, starting to turn around. "You will feel better for saying it."

Hazel eyes flash at him as he completes the turn, and the utter hatred in their depths dismays him. "Don't. Don't you _dare_ tell me how I feel," John snarls, both hands back on the gun, which is pointed without hesitation at his head.

"Very well, I will say it. Would you like me to tell you the reason Sherlock _committed suicide_, John?" The story had not been hard to piece together after his teams had combed the buildings and surrounding area, unfortunately. It was a tragedy, a catastrophic series of errors which had culminated in this, and he was ashamed of his part in the business.

The gun drops an inch (pointed at his mouth now, not his eyes, which is not much of an improvement) as the doctor stares at him. "There - there _was_ a reason, then," John whispers hollowly.

"A very good one," he answers, allowing some of his own remorse to show in his tone, though not his features; one does not show weakness before a friend or enemy or that grey area in-between where this unique man falls. "And it was neither shame from the tabloid stories, nor was Moriarty behind him forcing him off the roof."

John straightens up, the gun drops toward his middle, and the ex-soldier looks more scared to hear the reason than interested. "What did you find?"

"First off, we found James Moriarty on the roof of St. Bart's. Dead, shot through the mouth out the top of the head. Powder burns prove it was self-inflicted; obviously he set Sherlock up and then killed himself, ostensibly to force Sherlock into action."

"But - that doesn't make any sense," the doctor protests, the frown lines between his eyes becoming more pronounced. "He could have walked away, then!"

"But he did not; therefore we conclude he jumped under his own free will." John paled, and he sighed, lifting one hand a wary few inches. "Doctor Watson, would you like to have this conversation seated, and without the weapon pointed at me? Call a truce and have a whisky?"

"No," John snaps bluntly. "Explain; he jumped under his own free will, why?"

Well, he tried. "You knew Sherlock better even than I, John. Was he the type of man to commit suicide because the papers were painting him a fraud?"

"No," is the pained whisper. "He didn't care, and thought I was a bit ridiculous for caring. That is what I don't understand, Mycroft. Even if he was really a fraud - which he isn't - there is still no reason for him to - to -"

"Precisely," he rescues the floundering man. "Therefore I knew he must have a reason for what he did, something powerful enough to make him face the almost certainty of death rather than walk away from the scene unscathed. And..." he breathes a painful sigh. "I found that proof, John."

"What?" The word is low, hoarse, roughly painful to hear.

"We have 221B Baker Street under surveillance, you are of course aware."

"We've never found any cameras other than the one from Moriarty," John says, head snapping up.

"That is what you may _expect_ to find when I watch you. But that is beside the point."

"Then what is the point?"

"The workman doing the repairs on your flat for the last two days, John, is a known assassin-for-hire. Edited footage from the flat shows he had gun in his toolbox. I believe he was under orders to murder your estimable landlady had Sherlock not followed Moriarty's example and done away with himself. We cannot, of course, prove that, as the man is long gone, but that is my conjecture."

John's face is now a sickly grey color, and Mycroft hopes the doctor will release his grip on the gun if he intends to collapse.

"There is more," he warns, and John straightens, bracing his back against the opposite wall, before nodding for him to continue. He does so reluctantly. "In a disused flat across the street, a stairwell window which faced the location of Sherlock's...suicide leap, my teams discovered the marks of a sniper rifle on the window-sill."

John closed his eyes, murmuring a stricken _ohgod_ under his breath.

"It is not hard to deduce what he was told, John, is it?" he asks wearily. "I would not be at all surprised if you and Mrs. Hudson were not the only ones who were under a death sentence should he not jump. If he had walked away, most likely he would have walked outside to find you dead and his landlady the same way upon going home. Now tell me, John," he presses, watching as the shields crumble around the man's control, "what precisely would you have done in his place?"

John is shaking now, all except his hands, which are still steady in their clasp around a familiar weapon, and he looks up at last. Mycroft would do anything to be able to say he was blameless in producing that look of utter hopelessness, but he is not, and so he makes no move to attempt disarming the distraught physician.

"He always said emotions would be what destroyed him," John whispers, and the painful harshness of its truth is physically painful. "Grit in the lens and all that. We did this to him. We destroyed him."

"No, John," Mycroft says quietly. "James Moriarty destroyed him. And, as you said, I gave him the perfect ammunition to do so."

The man before him flinches, and the gun finally drops to his side. Mycroft carefully refuses to let his relief show. "A bit out of line, that," John whispers, pinching the bridge of his nose with his free hand.

He feels his lips twitch in a thin smile, for the first time all day. "No, it was not. You were entirely justified, and while I have to say no civilian has ever been so bold as to confront me regarding my mistakes it was quite refreshing. I believe that is part of the reason Sherlock so adored you, John."

It is obviously the wrong thing to say, because he is mildly horrified to see the gun drop from nerveless fingers. A moment later John is sliding down the wall of his vestibule, face buried in his shaking hands, crying bitterly, the sound of a man who has just lost his entire world and has no idea what he is supposed to do next.

Mycroft is relieved to see it, for it means the man is finally allowing himself to deal with the events, a luxury that he refuses to permit himself to have for he does not deserve comfort over his own loss. This will be his penance, the knowledge that it would have been kinder to kill Sherlock himself, than indirectly aid his greatest enemy. It is a burden he will carry until the day he dies, and a mark on a record he is already not proud of in familial regard.

He crouches before the weeping man, puts a hand carefully on the right shoulder (not the left; he well remembers Sherlock's utterly irate phone call regarding his cavalier and uninformed treatment of John's PTSD when first they met). "You will stay here tonight," he says, an order and not a question, knowing the soldier in the grieving physician will respond better to structure now.

John nods, face still hidden by his drawn-up knees, and Mycroft stands, knowing his presence is unwanted - and justifiably so.

Sherlock had, literally, laid down his own life in an attempt to save the friends he professed not to have. This knowledge makes Mycroft grateful to John Watson, for the power the man held over his little brother, and wistful, to think that Sherlock had changed so much in under two years.

The knowledge that there had not been any sort of sniper aimed into _his_ office at Moriarty's orders, was almost more painful than the knowledge that the body he had identified in the morgue was not Sherlock's.


	18. Chapter 18

**Title**: Holding Out for a Miracle  
><strong>Characters<strong>: John, various  
><strong>Rating: <strong>PG  
><strong>WarningsSpoilers**: Basic spoilers for TRF, though nothing particular to the episode. If you've read the ACD canon you don't need to have seen the episode to read this.  
><strong>Word Count<strong>: 1000 (ten drabbles)  
><strong>Summary<strong>: Written for this prompt:_ What if when Sherlock gets back he goes to see John and John doesn't even react just lets him slide seamlessly back into his life. And at first Sherlock thinks it's kind of weird but he gets used to it, to John never bringing it up, to the way he sometimes just snaps and yells or breaks something because he figures, "That's just the way he copes and I deserve so much worse." Then one day Lestrade or Mrs. Hudson or someone shows up and starts talking to Sherlock and John goes all white in the face and is surprised like "You can see him, too?" or the like_

_And that's when Sherlock realizes that the reason John never said anything was because he'd been imagining that Sherlock was still there the whole time. He never noticed that his hallucination had been replaced by the real thing._

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><p>The first time John sees Sherlock Holmes, he's waiting in queue for some sandwiches. The deli workers seem to be getting everyone's orders wrong, and he is considering ditching the entire thing in favor of a few pizzas.<p>

"They're so slow because the owner ran off last night with the panini griller," Sherlock says, staring at the line of customers with high disdain.

"Yes, of course," John sighs, not looking up from his mobile.

"The very _happily married_owner."

"No doubt."

"I'll have tuna on rye."

"You do that," John whispers, and steps through the illusion to give his order.

-00-

The second time John sees Sherlock Holmes, he's fallen asleep in front of a _Supernatural_re-run. An on-screen explosion wakes him, and he jerks upright and falls off the couch.

Sherlock snorts from where he's perched, spectre-like, on the back of his old leather chair. "That could be your new tabloid nickname," he points out, upside-down from John's point of view. "The Ever-Graceful John Watson."

"Not all of us are built like a ruddy ballet dancer, Sherlock," he mutters, and hauls himself wearily to his feet.

Sherlock's vanished when he looks up again, but that isn't surprising; Sherlock hates _Supernatural._

-00-

The third time John sees Sherlock Holmes, it's at breakfast. Even after three months, John still finds himself occasionally forgetting, making two cups of tea instead of one. Sometimes he drinks the second, sometimes he lets it sit there and grow cold and filmy. Once he threw the cup at the backsplash in the kitchen and sat down and cried. Not a good day, that.

Today, he makes two cups, and places the second on the table in front of Sherlock.

"Transport, John," Sherlock sniffs.

Mrs. Hudson thinks he's gone mad when she hears the cup smash against the wall.

-00-

The fourth time John sees Sherlock Holmes, it's All Hallows Eve and he half-heartedly notes the irony. It's a charity event for the NSY, one which is a veritable melee of garish costume and cheap food, but Lestrade had begged him to come and John knows that he needs to get out more.

But it is a bit hard to move on when Sherlock is flitting around him, giving a running commentary on people's costumes.

It's only when Sherlock comments snidely that Sally's ghost costume is less-than-authentic-looking, that John realises how dangerously close he is to hysterics, and excuses himself.

-00-

The fifth time John sees Sherlock Holmes, he's tapping away at his blog when the man shows up in the lounge with a slightly different haircut and looking several months older overnight.

"Back again, then?" he asks, resigned, not looking up after the initial glance.

"...John?"

Sherlock's voice sounds like he's a little lost, incredulous, mystified. Surely he's used to John ignoring him by now; ghosts don't have feelings, right?

"How long do you plan to stay this time?"

"I...don't know."

"Status normal, then?" he asks amicably, for he will not be a churlish host. "Would you like a cuppa?"

-00-

The sixth time John sees Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock's been gone for the entire evening, and besides a car backfiring a few minutes ago there's been not a peep out of Baker Street. He's preparing for sleep when Sherlock reappears. The man's sporting a red handprint on one cheek and a bruise on the other, but weirdly enough only laughs about them.

Sherlock looks surprised when John yawns and leaves in the middle of his story without so much as a good-night, but John really can't see what right a ghost has to be annoyed at a lack of societal niceties.

-00-

The seventh time John sees Sherlock Holmes, the man is standing over his bed, thin fingers clutching an electric torch. John's been dreaming, a strangely familiar concoction of chlorine and antiseptic and gunpowder and blood - smell is the strongest memory-trigger, and his dreams betray him thusly - and he's somewhat surprised to find yet another apparition when he awakes.

"You were crying," Sherlock says, stupidly.

"Probably," he agrees, tone flat.

"Can I help?"

He laughs, bitter and painful, because this above all else proves his hallucination to be just that, and rolls over, ignoring the figure's deceptively worried frown.

-00-

The eighth time John sees Sherlock Holmes, it's the following morning. He receives a text from Lestrade (_Recent events considered, come early. G_). John was going to meet Greg for breakfast this morning anyhow, chat about a case or two, have a friendly coffee, compare stories about Mycroft Holmes. Sherlock scoots into the cab behind him, and sits as far from John as he can get.

The driver's seat television screen blares some shopping channel. Sherlock slams his hand down on the power button, with a surprisingly solid-sounding _thwack_, and they stare at each other for a bizarre, startled second.

-00-

The ninth time John sees Sherlock Holmes, he's shut the cab door on a ghost's indignant squawk and joined Greg at the table, where the DI has apparently decided to pull up an extra chair. John raises an eyebrow, but Lestrade's hands are full of bagels and lattes and so it's a good three minutes of juggling before he can dump the lot.

By this time, Sherlock's ambled along behind him, and John sighs; is he to have no peace?

Greg glances up, and grins welcomingly. "Took your sweet time joining us, Sherlock," he says, and John's world goes swirling-grey.

-00-

The tenth time John sees Sherlock Holmes, it's to see the man's pale, worried features silhouetted against the cafe ceiling, a water glass poised against John's lips.

"Somatic group hallucination?" he offers feebly, and he could cry with joy (maybe he does) when the apparition shakes its head and unceremoniously yanks him upward with entirely corporeal force, into a crushing embrace. Someone sniffles, and someone else coos; John knows people are going to talk - and he doesn't care.

Because his fingers are clenched in a very real, very tangible overcoat, and he's not seeing anything but a tear-blurred miracle.


	19. Chapter 19

**Title**: More Experimentation Required  
><strong>Characters<strong>: John, Sherlock  
><strong>Rating<strong>: G  
>Word Count: 4,087<br>**Warnings/Spoilers**: S2 compliant, brief speculation of EMPT-esque S3. Shameless fluff. SHAMELESS, I TELL YOU. Read at your own risk. :P  
><strong>Summary<strong>: Written for this **sherlockbbc_fic** prompt: _The first time John hugged Sherlock. And the first time Sherlock hugged John. No slash please. Simple fluffy prompt is simple._

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><p>Many men (and women, because he isn't sexist by any stretch but that's not applicable here) aren't much for physical affection, John knows. He's always leaned more toward that 'safe distance' of personal space himself - or at least, had until he'd entered the military. War is terrible, dangerous, gutwrenching - and there was no way in that hell in which they lived that he would deny a dying man a bit of hand-holding, or refuse to return a clap on the back or a rough embrace before heading out to patrol. You never knew when the people you joshed with during the cool early morning would not be there for evening mess, and both as a doctor and as a generally decent bloke he rather thought that if he could make someone feel better then that was nothing less than his duty.<p>

So basically, he wouldn't call himself a _huggy_ person, exactly, but he had no real objections to giving one if it would make someone feel better. In fact, there were times just after his return to London that he found himself wishing for _any _type of physical contact at all; surely, the comfort it afforded on reception could only help his loneliness, his sense of increasing disconnect with the world around him.

But there was no one, because who'd want him for a mate - either platonic or romantic? 

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><p>Sherlock Holmes had grown up in a household with very little demonstrative affection shown. He knew he was cared for monetarily and appreciated mentally for the brilliant child he was, but other than the occasional hair-ruffle from Mycroft he rarely had physical contact with other people. It simply was not done, and after Mycroft moved to Uni it ceased completely. He became entirely self-reliant, because he trusted no one else to understand the uniqueness which was his mind, which included disassociation from distraction such as physical touch.<p>

And that was how he liked it. The added sensation of nerve endings firing on the few occasions it was instigated only served to overload his mental circuitry, causing him to withdraw to save his brain from systemic overload. He was aware of the whispers and murmurs around him as he passed through life, blissfully not prey to hormonal urges and overwhelming desires for physical touch - and he did not care.

Now, after several years spent in the fascinating cesspool which is the lowest class of Londoner, solving and investigating crimes of passion and otherwise, Sherlock Holmes has no desire to touch or be touched by anyone; because what is the _point_, except to serve as distraction or manipulation? 

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><p>John thinks Sherlock is a bizarre sort of bloke, who seems to regard his entire being as a sort of extraneous mechanism which can be controlled by the supercomputer he calls a brain. Stimuli produce results, he knows that as well as any scientist, and yet Sherlock has precious few stimuli which <em>do<em> produce such; obviously, for example, hunger is one such stimulus to which his flatmate has obviously become desensitized. Sherlock is driven only by The Work, and all else is 'transport'; distraction, in other words.

And yet, John has watched, observed in his own less spectacular way, that while Sherlock professes to be a brain without a heart, the man has his own way of showing affection. He has seen Sherlock hug Mrs. Hudson - or more accurately, not go stiff as a plank when she instigates a very motherly embrace. He's seen Sherlock refuse to eat on a case and yet remember exactly every six hours (John suspects he sets an alarm on his phone, but that doesn't make it any less endearing) to remind John to grab a snack where he can. He's watched as Sherlock will slice DI Lestrade's hesitant deductions to ribbons and then patiently explain his own in terms that Lestrade is able to copy for his police reports without sounding like he's plagiarising a dictionary.

And in turn, the experimenter has been experimented on. All scientists, all artists, as a general rule, are very tactile people, and John has noticed that Sherlock is no exception, other than the fact that he does not touch other people often and is, in fact, rather prickly when the idea even comes into conversation.

So.

John brings Sherlock his coffee of a morning, sets it down beside him as he sprawls on one elbow on the desk while typing on his laptop with the other, and then walks away with nary a word, just a small pat on the shoulder of greeting. He feels Sherlock's jolt of surprise (or else he'd gone to his mind palace and has only just returned) and puzzled eyes follow him back into the kitchen, but ignores them. John returns from the supermarket one evening, arms full of bags, and as his flatmate finally deigns to take three of them from his left hand he sighs with relief and trails a hand over Sherlock's shoulder in gratitude as he slips behind him with the refrigerated items. Sherlock vanishes from the kitchen a moment later, leaving him holding the bag (so to speak), but it is improvement upon the last. When they go for a walk on a rainy, chilly morning, John waits for the proper opportunity (namely, Sherlock making horrible fun at some innocent passer-by's expense) to laugh at his antics and then give him a friendly elbow-bump as they continue walking.

This time, Sherlock's lips twitch into something resembling a contented half-smile, and John knows he's making progress. Progress which will probably take a long while to achieve complete fruition, but still progress. Sherlock likes receiving tactile affection, though the man will probably never instigate it as he legitimately has no real concept of the difference between propriety and the invasion of personal space.

It's a shame, really, because as he sits in a large metal cage in the Baskerville laboratory, praying to any god that will listen that Sherlock will get him out before the beast prowling outside gets to him, all he can really think about is how much he'd really, _really_ like a hug right about now. 

* * *

><p>Sherlock thinks John is fascinating from the moment he sees him, that first fateful (fatal? Yet to be determined) glance in the computer laboratory at St. Bart's. He despises Mike Stamford for his easy, amiable idiocy, but he will forever be grateful to the man for introducing him to the greatest experiment he has ever encountered - namely, someone who is foolish enough (brave enough? also yet to be determined) to not simply tolerate his presence - actually <em>enjoy <em>it, to seek it out in preference to being alone.

This is an unheard-of variable, and as a scientist he knows that variables will upset the most set equations. John Watson is an enigma, one that even he has not yet unraveled to its core depths.

Weeks turn to months, and he still does not fully understand the man. John is one of the kindest, most compassionate (stupidly so, the man would put his coat on the ground to let a wet kitten not have to cross a puddle) men he has ever met. This would ordinarily drive Sherlock stark raving mad, as that type of trusting empathy is anathema to a balanced, controlled mind. But John has shot a man for threatening him, and looked the other way when Sherlock tossed an American spy out of his upstairs window. What sort of compassionate Hippocratic-oath-bound gentleman does such a thing?

John is without question possessing of an almost saintly patience and tolerance. Anyone else would have (has) left Sherlock after less than a fortnight of shared lodgings, and for that fact alone John's record stands as nothing short of incredible. His flatmate puts up with far more than any sane human would (_we're all mad here_, John had muttered once to Lestrade, when the DI had found a metacarpal in his tea mug). Horrible experiments, both physical and mental (Sherlock has actually tried to see how far he can push John's limits, and has yet to determine if said limits even _exist_); dangerous situations including becoming an innocent hostage to a deranged criminal mob boss; attempts at kidnapping and bribery from the most dangerous man in London - and far more than that, but those will do for starters. John is longsuffering to the point that it is simply not safe - and yet he will blow up about the most inane things, such as regular mealtimes and Sherlock sleeping more than two hours a night.

All in all, Sherlock believes he could spend over a century studying John Watson and still not find his limits.

But John has them, he is certain, and as Sherlock knows a good thing when he sees it he is not so foolish as to make John want to leave for good. Besides including him in The Work (because really he is the one benefitting the most, not John), Sherlock begins to experiment on his unsuspecting flatmate, as to how John perceives gratitude...affection, he supposes is the word, though it sounds like the summary of an afternoon crap telly show and he would die before speaking the accursed syllables aloud.

John is not a tactile person, as a rule. When Sherlock tests him with requests to retrieve his mobile from different pockets on his person, he finds this out straight away. Annoyance from the coat pocket. Discomfort but reluctant acquiescence from the inside jacket pocket. Flat refusal from the back trouser pocket. Sherlock runs a second test; insists upon a series of experiments with differing key words indicating actions they are to take together without their opponents' realising what they are about. These result in their being handcuffed or tied together, placed in various positions battling imaginary opponents, and exercising some basic self-defense moves John would not have picked up in the army. John good-naturedly goes along with the experiments, and they stand them in good stead, but does not welcome Sherlock's trying to help him up after a well-aimed but overenthusiastic kick sends him crashing against the wall. John pushes him away when Sherlock examines his head for injury, looking a bit uncomfortable and muttering about not being 'a bloody slide under your microscope, Sherlock.'

Conclusion: John gives physical touch as an indication of affection, but does not really prefer it in return.

And it hits him one day when he is hacking through a series of passwords on John's laptop to view locked documents on it - John is a writer. John works with words. Writing is fairly impersonal; surely it is not so hard to manage it with a bit of effort.

He begins by sending John a text one night after the man has gone up to bed.

_Thank you for bringing  
>extra phone battery to<br>crime scene today. I  
>appreciate the thought<br>behind it.  
>SH<em>

He receives a reply almost immediately.

_Are u inhaling ammonia  
>vapours again?<em>

It beeps again, almost immediately, well before he can take offense.

_You're welcome. :)  
>Now go to bed, idiot.<em>

Grinning to himself, he does so, confident that he has found the answer to his experiment.

It is a pity, though, that John does not appreciate physical touch as much, because Sherlock rather thinks he might not mind it as much from someone he trusts as he does John. 

* * *

><p>John has been hugged by more people than he ever wants to see again in the last twenty-four hours. Even those whom he would like nothing more than to push off the same building as Sherlock jumped from - Donovan, for one, who burst into tears on his shoulder and apologized so sincerely that he can't hate her half as much as he'd like to - have tried their best to comfort what he knows most of them think is the male version of a grieving widow.<p>

No, Sherlock is - was - 'only' his best friend. Evidently that kind of loss can't _possibly_ be as heart-wrenching as would a _romantic_ attachment, if people are to be believed. He is rather relieved that he still has not been able to truly shed a tear - because people would talk even more than they are. And at the same time, he is jealous of everyone else who is permitted to weep openly at Sherlock's quiet memorial without anyone spreading more rumours than are already sweeping through the never-satisfied tabloids.

People are idiots, Sherlock used to say flippantly on a regular basis. And, as always - nearly always (such an unconvincing performance, on the roof - researching John indeed) - the man was right.

Now, three months later, as he finally agrees to Mrs. Hudson's gentle prodding and goes to see his therapist again, no one really gets his grief, understands why after this time he still isn't capable of talking about it without his throat tightening until he can barely breathe. Sherlock was 'just a good friend,' according to one well-meaning nurse he knows from the clinic, and it's time he began to 'heal from the grief.' He knows it's true, knows people like Lestrade and an increasingly gaunt-looking Mycroft Holmes are worried about him...but it feels disloyal, somehow, to try and move on from a man who transformed his life so completely from the failed, miserable loneliness it had been when he returned from Afghanistan.

He's a soldier. He should be accustomed to unexpected loss, and be able to get past that to continue with his life. Sherlock would never have wanted his memories to be almost too painful to be borne. Sherlock would want him to move on, to find another flatmate, to find another life. Sherlock wouldn't have understood how John feels like a part of his soul died that day, as he watched his best friend commit suicide right in front of him. If John hasn't broken down yet, he will need to at some point, because he can't let it go until he _lets_ go.

People tell him all these things, and he knows they're all true; he is a doctor, after all.

But who would have thought his breaking point would be a visit from a little boy, whom Lestrade explains in a quiet voice was Moriarty's fourth bomb victim in the case of the five pips, what seems a lifetime ago to John. Evidently six-year-old Billy Newcombe had seen the newspapers and wanted John to know that he didn't believe them, that Sherlock Holmes was 'his hero and he wanted to be just like him someday and save people.' Lestrade explains to a stunned John that the kid had actually called New Scotland Yard repeatedly for three weeks asking for Detective Inspector Lestrade until he finally managed to get hold of Donovan, who instead of turning him down passed the call on.

The little boy's sad face twists something deep inside John's chest, but it's not until Billy gives him an unexpected hug around the legs that he finally breaks down, and cries as he hasn't been able to since Sherlock died. 

* * *

><p>Sherlock had thought his problems would end once he faced off with Jim on the roof of the hospital; neatly wrapped up into one little package plummeting to the pavement below. He was prepared to fake his own death as a last resort, had all the steps in place to do so long before setting up the meeting - but Moriarty's cursed perception thwarted his original plan. Sherlock had been perfectly willing to gamble with his own life - but he was wholly unprepared to do so with anyone else's, and especially not with John's, Mrs. Hudson's, and Lestrade's.<p>

Now, he stands hidden in tree and shadow, watching as two of the three visit his grave, and wonders how it came to this and how long it will be before he is able to go home. Mrs. Hudson does not come as often as one would think (according to Mycroft's surveillance camera which is trained on his headstone), probably because her hip gives her terrible grief this time of year, especially in such a wet spring. But John - John is here every Sunday, as regular as clockwork, so regular that he has to wonder if it's become a semi-military ritual with the grieving man. Sometimes he stays only a few moments, says a word or two, and leaves; sometimes he stays for hours, sitting on the ground across from the reflective stone, and talks until the sun begins to set through the trees. Sometimes he brings a wreath of some kind, usually blue flowers for some reason known only to him, and looks on silently before turning with a military snap of heels and departing - and sometimes he comes and obviously fights to control his rage and grief from manifesting themselves in angry tears.

Sherlock has not dared to watch in person, even from afar, until this week, the first time in which John finally finds words to say and tears to shed, and what Sherlock sees makes him want to do nothing more than rush across the grass of the cemetery and tell his friend the truth. Mrs. Hudson had taken John's hand for a moment in a motherly gesture before she left him this time, and John had clung to that small touch like a lifeline for the comfort it offered.

Jim Moriarty had said he would burn the heart out of him...and he has to wonder, if Jim knew that watching a man one cares for suffer, burns inside far worse than suffering the loss one's self. 

* * *

><p>John has become resigned to the fact that his life no longer resembles what seems to be Reality for Normal People in any way, and is now leaning more toward the unbelievable side of the Life in a Crap Movie section of that spectrum.<p>

Because why else would he have been called up in the middle of the evening by what sounds disturbingly like an overexcited (meaning, actually showing inflection and _hurry_ in his voice) Mycroft Holmes, telling him he's on his way with a visitor and John is not to leave the house under any circumstances, only to have the man show up a quarter of an hour later with his brother.

His _dead_ brother.

The joke really, really isn't funny, and he says (read: snarls at the elder Holmes with as much venom as he can produce) so with colourful language that his old army mates would be proud of.

And then Sherlock steps into the light of the lamps Mycroft is methodically switching on - and even John's best (worst?) hallucinations would never produce that particular, peculiar, _impossible_ light of joy and affection that shines softly out of those familiar fog-blue eyes.

John takes a step backward, wobbles as the floor tilts underneath him, and then vaguely registers a dual look of alarm from the two Holmeses as his focus tunnels down to a grey, fuzzy pinpoint before fading out completely. 

* * *

><p>Sherlock much enjoyed the look on his elder brother's face when he showed up in his Whitehall office earlier in the afternoon. Less so the severe lecture about safety precautions and interrupting important government business, but it had been a small price to pay, to see Mycroft actually look pleased to see him for once. The stress of holding Sherlock's secret had not been easy, nor had covering up Sherlock's tracks as well as contributing to the downfall of Moriarty's web of contacts. Now, Sherlock could tell elder brother was more than eager to rid himself of all the above responsibility, and was currently en route to pass him off to his longsuffering - and <em>much <em>suffering - flatmate.

He wriggles on the seat of the car, restless and itching to get out and run for it as that must be quicker than navigating Friday afternoon traffic through Hyde Park. John will no doubt be angry, furious probably, but a broken jaw will be a small price to pay for reconciliation (which he knows will happen just after said jaw is likely broken, because John is incapable of holding a grudge for long). Perhaps he will be lucky enough that John will be too shocked to attack him, and he will have a chance to explain himself before the man turns into Captain Watson In A Strop.

Some small portion of him hopes, hopes so very very much, that John will simply be happy to see him, nothing more...and yet he knows it to be a vain wish, a highly unlikely and unrealistic hope.

Never, in his countless imaginings of this scene (filling dozens of useless hours while he has been on the run for these long months), has he even entertained the idea of John turning the colour of his oatmeal jumper when Sherlock steps into view, before giving a kind of choking gasp as his legs buckle like he's been pushed from behind.

Mycroft makes a sound of alarm, the closest the Ice Man will ever come to showing emotion, even as Sherlock crosses the room in two long jumps just in time to catch John as he crumples completely, eyes rolled up in his head, which now lolls against Sherlock's chest. Sherlock's arms tighten of their own accord as there is an equal tightening in his throat, because from his vantage point he can see the new lines of stress and worry which have aged his friend's face before its time, sees the premature bit of grey at John's temples, and he knows he has been the cause of both. He closes his eyes for a moment, hands clenched safely in John's jumper, and hangs on tightly as he can while he controls his already stretched-thin emotions.

A pity, Sherlock considers a moment later. The first (hopefully not only?) time he actually voluntarily hugs John, the man does not even have the decency to be _awake_ during it. 

* * *

><p>John's fit lasts only a few seconds, for which he is grateful, as it means the shock was not extremely serious and there is little possibility that his dramatic reappearance has done permanent damage to the poor man's psyche (trust issues already, after this Sherlock will have much work to do, certainly).<p>

Barely has he blinked enough to regain control of his facial features than John squirms feebly, makes a pained noise in the back of his throat that causes Sherlock's arms to twitch in reaction. He loosens his grip a bit as his friend's arms flail dramatically with the return to reality, before he is roughly pushed backward by unsteady hands, and regarded by a heavily-breathing John, who looks somewhere between nauseated and about to throw something sharp at his head.

"You're dead," John finally says, in that adorably stupid plod he adopts when he is trying very hard to not lose control of himself.

"Not so, obviously."

"You jumped off a _building_, Sherlock."

"So I did, John. Though not entirely to the pavement; into a lorry well-stocked with basic stunt equipment including disguised inflatable mattresses."

"I pronounced you dead on the scene myself, s-saw your body in the morgue afterward!"

"Ah, but it was a closed-casket funeral, John; you did not see the body buried in my coffin."

"Where _have_ you been?" John demands hotly.

"In hiding. Moriarty killed himself that day on the roof, but his chief three subordinates were poised to kill you, Mrs. Hudson, and Lestrade had I not followed him in 'suicide'. Until they were dealt with, I could not return without risking your immediate demise, any of you."

"...Really? That's really why you haven't returned until now?"

He nods earnestly, hoping John's expression means he believes. "The last was apprehended in Paris this morning. I give you my word, John."

John's eyes have ceased their darting wildly around the room (Mycroft has had the good sense to strategically retreat by now) and are focused entirely on him. "You - you! You are -"

"Forgiven?" he blurts, hopeful.

John gives him an incredulous eyebrow. "INSANE," he finally expostulates, arms waving a bit wildly.

He cocks his head, because that much he already knows. That still does not answer his question. But before he can reiterate it in a different manner, he is nearly bowled over by a compact body whose arms catch him around the chest in a grip so tight he feels his spine pop. John is laughing - crying? something, at any rate - into his jacket, and he wonders if it is normal for a first-time hug to make it rather difficult to draw a deep breath. Or perhaps that is more due to the obstruction in his throat, which repeated clearing does nothing to dispel.

The first time John hugs Sherlock, Sherlock decides that it is not at all unpleasant by any stretch. Perhaps his initial research on the matter with John had been in error.

Either way, it certainly will bear further, repeated, experimentation.


	20. Chapter 20

**Title**: _ Even Doctors Have Bad Days_  
><strong>Characters<strong>: Sherlock, John  
><strong>Rating<strong>: G  
><strong>Word Count<strong>: 2576  
><strong>WarningsSpoilers**: Mentions of war and political opinions, and (non-author's-opinion) offscreen insults to military personnel if that's triggering for you. Also there is platonic hugging, because I'm in the mood for schmoop and because even John 'has bad days'. :P  
><strong>Summary<strong>: Written for **Pompey** as the last of my **watsons_woes** member-party fic offers, for the prompt _Watson seems the cheerier, more optimistic of the Baker Street duo, but when he has a depressive spell it makes Holmes's black moods look a pale shade of grey by comparison. Just in the mood for some good ol' fashioned emotional whump, I guess. _

* * *

><p>Sherlock Holmes is well aware of his own limits and shortcomings. This is only to be expected, since the list is quite a short one. And while the general populace of idiots might name some of his less socially acceptable traits (such as a refusal to lie solely in order to spare someone's feelings) as faults, he disagrees; therefore they are few in number, and as no man is perfect there is no shame in brutal self-honesty.<p>

He has been aware since childhood that his mood swings are slightly more erratic than his fellows'; but then his mind is in a completely different echelon of humanity and it certainly follows that his outlook on life will therefore be equally eccentric. Since university he has been aware that his mental cycles swing with fair regularity, in a constant effort to escape the humdrum routine which is a Normal Life. His drug of choice has always been work, that other and more harmful one only a poor substitute borne of sheer desperation. Without work, without occupation, his brain races like an overexerting engine, threatening to wrack itself to pieces.

In consequence, he believes he is quite entitled to be out of sorts when society decides to behave itself and therefore deprive his brain of sustenance. His childhood physicians called them manic-depressive mood swings; Mycroft always simply called them attitude problems; he calls them Intolerable Periods of Stagnation; John calls them Sherlock-can't-you-bloody-shift-yourself-so-I-can-dust-around-you-or-are-you-still-in-a-snit.

Ah, John. Reliable, practical, predictable John is the current source of his mental intrigue, and with good cause.

Sherlock is aware of his own black moods; only a fool would not be. He does not care what anyone thinks of them, but he does acknowledge their existence, and he knows he can be quite intolerable during them. He does not speak for days on end (though that has become a rare thing, with the advent of his doggedly stubborn fellow-lodger), he refuses to eat besides the odd piece of toast, he goes out of his way to be an infuriation to the idiots he must live and work with, he becomes quite messy and does not care that he is so, and generally tries to be as difficult as possible to live with.

John is a never-ending source of patience during these times, which alone fascinates him (and urges him on, more often than not, because he would so like to discover those seemingly nonexistent limits). He has ignored John, patronized him, snapped at him, shouted at him, and even thrown things at him, and yet John keeps coming back, keeps _caring_, despite it all.

John is a fool, would be the logical conclusion, and yet he knows the man is not. Therefore, his data is in some way erroneous. It is a problem he knows he will spend an inordinate amount of time unraveling, the permanence of which is not completely unalluring.

But his problem is John, and the fact that while Sherlock can be a 'right terror' according to Lestrade, when the mood hits him - when John is in a black mood, it is nothing less than fearsome. Whereas Sherlock goes silent, morose, brooding, and thinks nothing of it, when John does the same it is highly _disturbing_.

John is a cheerful, calm person by nature - deceptively so - a man who makes friends easily and who enjoys the social interaction which the Normal People employ to fill voids in their lives. He has no trouble making girlfriends, only keeping them; he maintains good relationships with medical and other friends/colleagues, and he is a generally pleasant person to be around (high praise, from Sherlock). John is intelligent, and possessing a certain dry and unashamedly snarky wit that makes him a highly enjoyable conversant. The man is incessantly cheerful in the mornings especially, which is an undying source of annoyance to Sherlock, who prefers the world to shut up and let a chap think before ten, thank you very much, and no he has no desire to hear a chirpy companion chat at him all through breakfast. Disgusting.

So when John goes silent, it means either that he is angry about something, and that a storm is brewing and scheduled to break shortly - or that he is falling into one of his own rare but frighteningly severe black moods. Usually this is in response to a bad bout of nightmares, thankfully more uncommon as the months pass - or he reads something about the situation in the Middle East in the papers and it upsets him. Once in a while the fits come on after his latest girlfriend decides she cannot share him with Sherlock, or when Harry is being a particularly difficult sibling to deal with.

Part of the problem is that John cares too much, about everything in general. Sherlock does not worry about Mycroft, his health and work stress and God knows what else; if he did, he would drive himself to distraction (besides, he simply does not _like_ Mycroft, and so why should he). Sherlock does not care about whether society thinks his person and his chosen occupation or past actions are reprehensible or responsible; why should he care, if he is satisfied with his own work. Sherlock does not care about the people with whom he lives unless something occurs to put them into danger; and even then it is not an all-consuming thought which absorbs his entire thought process.

Speaking of which, he realises with some irritation that he really should not be thinking this much about John's apparent depressive issues; he is defeating his own mental argument by pondering his flatmate's emotional distress for the last...four hours.

Perhaps revision of his _own_ mental evaluation is in order.

But he abhors deviation from established routine, and he does not appreciate John performing in a way that varies from his habitual actions and emotions. It is unsettling, and he is unsettled enough without the added nuisance of another man's issues.

He knows the cause, at least, this time, which is an advantage. A witness on their latest case decided yesterday to spew a string of vitriolic comments at his flatmate when the man heard John had served in Afghanistan, a trigger that set the current events in motion. War is a terrible thing, only a moron would believe otherwise, and Sherlock does not care to get involved in politics - but only an idiot would believe that there are not both good and bad men in every battle on every side, and that the actions of a government do not negate the value and valour of the people sworn to serve that government. Disagreement does not need to be uncivil, and the aristocrat in him loathes the utter banality and idiocy of someone who desires to inflict biases upon others in such a vulgar and rude manner. Any man who agrees to place himself in harm's way to protect another - inside or outside of a war and all it entails - is braver than the majority of the general population, and as such deserves to be respected, or at the very least afforded common basic courtesy.

Sherlock would cheerfully have rammed the witness's words back down his throat along with his incisors, except that they needed his testimony and it was hard enough to coax the account out of the idiot.

Also, Lestrade was holding him back.

John had gone quite pale at the most brutal of the barbs, which all but said that the six British and American soldiers who had been killed in a recent roadside bombing in Iraq had deserved to die. Jaw clenched, John had spun tensely on his heel in military fashion and left the room, and Sherlock had not gone after him simply because he needed to evaluate the witness's continuing testimony, eventually catching the idiot out on several mismatched details which proved he was covering for the accused's girlfriend.

John had been morose and curt for the rest of the day and all of this morning, barely responding when spoken to and then only in monosyllables. Sherlock was aware that nightmares had kept his flatmate up for at least the better part of the night, and John was always a bit more testy when he'd not had a modicum of sleep (something Sherlock had learnt to his chagrin within the first few months of their association). For once Sherlock had been the one cajoling John to eat breakfast, rather than the opposite, and had got his head nearly taken off for his pains.

It is as if a black cloud of gloomy sadness hovers over the flat, depressive and dank and altogether distracting, because Sherlock can hardly focus on his experiments if John is ambling about looking as if he would like to set something on fire or curl up and sulk under a fluffy afghan. That is Sherlock's monopoly, thank you, and he does not need to be dealing with a set of depressive issues from his usually sunny, or at least even-tempered, flatmate.

He has come to the conclusion that John is occupying entirely too large a portion of his attention, and it needs to stop; he cannot focus on himself when John is unhappy, and that is all there is to it.

He sits now opposite John in front of the fire, carefully observing the man over the lid of his laptop as he ostensibly updates his latest website article (detailing different types of fingernail clippings and how they can be useful in reconstruction of an entire missing body). John has been staring into the fire for an hour and a half, give or take a few minutes in which he changed to staring at his ragged slippers. A newspaper lies open on his lap, but he has not glanced at it. A teacup, still full, sits at his elbow, and it is not because Sherlock drugged it this time since he actually took the time to make one just how John likes it (not that it has been any use, he notes with annoyance; see if he makes the gesture again!).

John's eyes are red-rimmed with fatigue and misery, his face lined with care-wrinkles that he is still too young to be sporting so visibly. As he watches, John fidgets absently with his trousers, going from one finger tapping the fabric to unconsciously rubbing the leg in which he used to have that accursed psychosomatic limp. That is a bit not good. Sherlock feels strangely miserable at the sight, even if he knows he did not really 'cure' the limp but merely helped John cure himself - and he feels an unaccountable urge to do what Mrs. Hudson seems to do on a regular basis when she sees him looking at his worst in those depressive fits of his.

It is a thought; and certainly it could do no harm?

"Stand up, John," he orders abruptly, tossing the laptop onto the seat behind him as he vaults out of his chair.

John jumps at the sudden movement, and gives him a glare that is half-hearted at best, pathetic at worst. "Sherlock, what. No. Whatever you're doing, I am not in the mood," he says, leaning his head tiredly against the back of the chair.

"Come on," he coaxes insistently, gesturing with both hands. "Stand up, John."

He gets a scowl, a little more legitimate this time, but at least it is a reaction. "What _for_."

"An experiment," he exclaims brightly, because that is the standard go-to answer for anything he needs to justify to a skeptical John. And it is not entirely untrue, besides.

John swears at him, quite openly and rudely, which is another Bad Thing, because usually his friend is too kind-hearted to deny him anything and rarely does he actually snap over nothing at all. But Sherlock lets it roll off just like John ignores his little outbursts at times (turnabout is fair play, after all), and gestures impatiently. John gives the godmother of all dramatic sighs but ultimately hauls himself to his feet, wincing slightly when he puts weight on his 'bad' leg, and plants himself opposite Sherlock with a look that clearly says if Sherlock is playing games with him he's likely to end up on the floor with a split lip and no apology.

Sherlock walks up to him, cautiously but confidently (he has observed this often enough on the telly and been recipient from their estimable landlady; he can do this), and puts both arms around his shorter friend, squeezing with what he hopes is the customary amount of pressure to be considered Good and not Disturbing.

John stands stiff as a plank, not moving so much as a finger. Sherlock frowns; he is supposed to relax and return the gesture. _This_ is a bit like embracing a small cable-knitted ionic column.

"Sherlock, what." John's voice is muffled in Sherlock's dressing-gown, but its dry exasperation is clearly audible nonetheless. "What are you doing."

"Really, John, I should think it would be obvious even to someone as unobservant as you," he rejoins loftily, still puzzled by the lack of response.

Perhaps he is not performing the action correctly?

He squeezes harder, experimentally. John gives a kind of strangled squeak, sounding rather like he's just hoovered a chipmunk. Not good, then.

But John is relaxing a bit, now, and one hand has come up in a tentative gesture to pat awkwardly at Sherlock's back. Good.

"Sherlock, really. What."

"Physical contact, especially this sort, is considered the standard approach to emotional comfort in non-romantic relationships, is it not?" he asks, with genuine interest. "Mrs. Hudson has demonstrated such quite often, and while I am no expert I am aware of the general concept of, I believe it is commonly called 'needing a hug'?"

John mutters something that sounds vaguely insulting, but then laughs into his lapels and hesitantly returns the gesture with both arms. "You are an absolute nutter, you are," he says, shaking his head roughly against Sherlock's dressing-gown.

"Yes, quite. Good deduction, that."

John laughs again, a wonderful sound, given the fact that he looked five minutes ago as if he would not so much as smile for the next ten years or so.

"Is this acceptable?" he asks, for he must add the data to his experiment to gain fully conclusive results that are not based upon Mrs. Hudson's affections and very poorly-scripted late-night telly. Obviously it has been a Good Thing for John, as it has gotten the desired response.

John releases him and steps back, arms folded relaxedly across his middle. "Quite acceptable," he replies, smiling up at Sherlock. "You can mark the experiment down a complete success. Technique could use a bit of refining, but ultimately...a success."

"Excellent." He flashes John a smug smile, and folds himself back up in his chair, retrieving the laptop as he does. "Now I beg you to not bother me for two hours, as I am far behind in this essay."

John chuckles and picks up his teacup, heads for the kitchen. "Shall I make something for dinner, then?" he calls over the sound of the microwave. "Or...Sherlock, what did you mix in with these eyeballs? I do believe it's developing sentience..."

Sherlock, covertly smiling at his laptop screen, ignores him and the ensuing lecture on hygiene, because that is what they _do_.

And all is right with the world.


	21. Chapter 21

**Title**: Apologies  
><strong>Characters<strong>: Sherlock, John  
><strong>Rating<strong>: K  
><strong>Word Count<strong>: 400 (four drabbles)  
><strong>WarningsSpoilers**: Mild canon spoilers, S1 and 2. Yet another EMPT-esque reunion scene, ish.  
><strong>Summary<strong>: Sherlock Holmes does not believe in apologising.

* * *

><p>Apologies have never been Sherlock's métier. Strike that, the very word has never been a part of his not-unimpressive vocabulary. Any action he takes is fully intentional and with premeditated thought, for thought rules supreme in and over the palace of the mind. He does not apologise for his actions or words, for he does not believe they merit apologies. Apologies, by very definition, signify regret and a given understanding to change such behavior in the future; he has no intention of saying either, and so he does not apologise.<p>

There have been a few, scant few, exceptions, of course.

* * *

><p>He had blackmailed Mycroft into deleting the ASBO from John's profile soon after they'd wrapped up Sebastian's case. Not because he regretted leaving John to hold the bag and attract trouble with the authorities, but simply because he wanted to show John that yes, he was more than just a colleague, thank you <em>very<em> much, and while he did not know precisely how to go about being a Friend he knew that doing Good Things for one's friends was at least a given step.

John had thanked him, a little suspiciously, but they both knew it was not an apology.

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><p>The morning after returning from Baskerville, he made coffee for his (only) friend. Not an apology, for they both knew he would repeat his offense. Not with lights and sirens (because he'd forgotten John's PTSD), but he'd still perform experiments.<p>

He offered the coffee to John, and waited.

John hesitated. Sherlock did not blame him, would not blame him for hurling the coffee in his face or refusing it.

And yet, John took it. Reached out, accepted, thanked him, and drank, without looking suspiciously into it and without analysing its taste.

But they both knew it was not an apology.

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><p>Apologies have never been Sherlock's métier. Any action he takes is with premeditated thought, for thought rules supreme in the palace of the mind. Apologies signify regret and a given understanding to change such behavior in future; he has no intention of saying either, and so he does not apologise.<p>

"I liked you better when you didn't believe in heroes," John half-sobs, as they cling desperately to each other amid a group of shocked Scotland Yarders, still slack-jawed at his resurrection explanation.

"I'm sorry," he offers feebly, and they giggle - for they both know it is not an apology.


	22. Chapter 22

**Drabbles**: #7 and #11  
>Drabble Table at my LiveJournal<br>**Fandom**: BBC Sherlock  
><strong>Pairing<strong>: Gen, John & Sherlock  
><strong>WarningsSpoilers**: TRF basic spoilers  
><strong>Summary<strong>: Two related drabbles, dealing with what's become my pet peeve in this fandom right now - why on earth people think that anyone has a right to be mad at Sherlock for **[SPOILERS]**

**.  
><strong>

**.  
><strong>

pretending his own suicide. Granted, it could have been done differently, and granted, we don't yet know how long it lasts - but come on, it's not at all like ACD's Holmes, where he pulled something similar and had no leg to stand on as to why he kept the deception up for three years. This is a totally different situation, and it's starting to irk me how far overboard the fandom is going regarding Sherlock's reception once he is able to return. /fanrant

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><p><strong>Prompt #7 - Melancholy<strong>

John wasn't sure why everyone thought he should be angry with Sherlock for pretending his death.

Perhaps it was due to John's military training, the knowledge that sometimes the right thing is not the easy thing; or perhaps, it was because everyone else seemed to think Sherlock deserved to be punched in the face (which he did, John averred, but not for this). Certainly, it had been deliberate, and Sherlock rarely thought of his actions' consequences - but Sherlock's reason for doing it? How dare anyone fault him for that?

After everyone had had their go, they were left alone in a flat musty from disuse, looking awkwardly at each other.

"Sherlock," John began hesitantly, as his friend looked morosely out the window. "Y'know I would have done the same, don't you? If I'd been in your place."

Sherlock flicked him a surprised glance. "Really?" he asked quietly. John nodded, and Sherlock's eyes closed, head slumped against the window-glass.

"You're the first person to tell me I did the Right Thing, John," Sherlock finally whispered. "I...don't understand."

John's heart broke at the dejected sincerity, and they stood together in the window for a very long time.

**Prompt #11 - Complicated**

Mycroft, Lestrade, and the half-dozen others Sherlock had shocked by his return received more than one surprise. If dealing with a newly-resurrected Sherlock, high as a kite on adrenaline and glee was bad...well, dealing with a furious ex-Army medic was ten times worse.

John vicariously considered it well worth being thrown out of The Diogenes (again), to see the flabbergasted look on Mycroft's face when he finished.

Lestrade was quietly and calmly and very scarily warned that if he didn't recognise that he'd be a smear of blood and brain matter on his office wall if it hadn't been for Sherlock, and if he neglected to apologise for decking the amateur, John was in possession of some information his superiors would be quite interested in, given the DI's still-shaky standing at NSY.

"I never pegged you for blackmail, John," he spluttered, only half-heartedly.

"I never pegged _you_ for someone a criminal mastermind would be able to - successfully_, _mind - use as leverage against a man you believe to be a sociopath, Greg," John countered meaningfully.

And for the first time, Lestrade realised that somewhere along the way, Sherlock Holmes had become a Good Man.


End file.
